by Amy Lane
“By the lake,” Quinlan admitted, so embarrassed. “Like a damned movie, you know?”
“Wow.” Dustin feathered his lips along Quinlan’s temple, and Quinlan could have cried, he wanted so badly to respond. “That’s romantic. You weren’t just thinking, ‘Hey, Dusty’s a hottie, I could bone him!’ You were thinking romance. That’s awesome.”
“My breath’s so bad it could raise the dead. Don’t give me points for romance now.”
“Oh, but I do,” Dustin murmured. “You want to know what I was thinking about when you got home?”
Quinlan groaned and buried his face in the pillow. “No.”
“Liar.”
“Please don’t tell me.” He was so pathetic. “Not now. Wait until I can get up and brush my teeth. Please, Dusty? Please?”
“Sure.” Dustin give him a chaste kiss on the cheek. “Just remember those words when you’re better. They figured big in my fantasy.”
Quinlan squinted at him, confused. “I need to brush my teeth?”
“No. ‘Please, Dusty, please!’”
“Oh.”
His brain shorted out, and he closed his eyes, trying to think what thing he’d beg Dustin to do first. He fell asleep like that, Dustin’s warmth next to him, his smell, his laughter.
The promise of health and kisses and a bright sunny day by crystal-blue water.
He dreamed of stretching his hand to touch the lake from a great distance away, and it was always just beyond his touch.
SIX interminable days later, he was well enough to actually get dressed, brush his teeth, and shave.
And go to the doctor’s and have more blood tests to make sure his electrolytes were balanced and he wasn’t going to keel over if he got overheated on the way from the apartment to the car.
He told Dustin that morning that it didn’t matter why he was getting up—he was out of bed, wearing clothes, and not looking like—
“You’re still pale,” Dustin said critically. “And you’ve lost muscle mass. I mean, you always get skinny on tour, but now you’re emaciated. No hiking for you for a little while.”
Quinlan glared at him. Dustin had gone to work for the last two days, and Nica had sent Melly and Conroy into the apartment to take turns annoying Quinlan. Those were Nica’s words, but the kids both played Overwatch on PS4, and Quinlan loved playing with them. Conroy was sort of the universal healer of the party—he purposefully took that character. Melly took Widow because she liked to kill and kill bloody. Together they were sort of unstoppable, and Quinlan enjoyed their company—when he could stay awake.
“What am I supposed to do?” Quinlan complained now. “Three more days of Overwatch and I’m going to start regressing back to high school.”
Dustin blew a raspberry at him in the mirror. “That’s a shitty plan. How about you just go to the doctor’s, then come get lunch with me, and then we can watch mushy movies back here until you fall asleep and dream of me.”
Quinlan glared at him. “I already dream of you. It’s….” He was so pale that the stain of embarrassment across his cheeks was clearly obvious.
“Embarrassing?” Dustin asked blandly.
“Shut up.”
“Make me.”
“Dustin Matthew Robbins-Grayson—”
Dustin kissed him.
Just out of the blue, mouth over his, their freshly brushed breath mingling, his hands gentle on Quinlan’s thin shoulders.
Quinlan responded—and melted into his body like butter. Dustin wrapped brawny arms around his shoulders and held him, unresisting and soft, against a chest wide as a ’70s muscle car.
“Wow.” Dustin exhaled a shaky breath. “That was epic.”
“Unexpected,” Quinlan croaked. Which was true—but stupid. Dusty had slept with him for the past five nights, living out of Quinlan’s apartment like it was his own. His mom had even brought in a chest of drawers, and Melly had told him that Belinda was thrilled because her boyfriend’s apartment was a real shithole, so she got to move Joachim into her place, and Dustin would stop harassing her cat.
But consequences notwithstanding, Dustin had been there, in Quinlan’s home, his life, his bed, for the last five days.
Quinlan had been sick—but not dead.
And Dustin’s warm, adult, male body had wrapped around his night after night, until he couldn’t even think of sleeping alone anymore. Quinlan had awoken that morning, Dustin’s arm over his, and had rubbed his lips along Dusty’s bicep just on instinct, hoping he knew the rituals, the touches you graced your lovers with because you could.
Dustin had responded by nuzzling the back of his neck, and Quinlan’s eyes fluttered closed as he fell into that caress, his nerve endings awakening from the slumber of sickness, his stomach fluttering with the promise of what could happen that night, if only Quinlan could stay awake, could find his good health and his courage in the same place.
Now, leaning on Dustin’s rather magnificent chest, Quinlan made a realization.
There was no more child in his perception of Dusty.
There was no more strangeness about this adult body taking the place of the boy he’d once known.
This was Dustin, and he’d been Quinlan’s caretaker, and the warmth in his bed and the dry, teasing voice in his ear for the last week.
Just like he’d been the cheerful face in the camera for the last two months.
And Quinlan’s friend, companion, snarky pain in his ass, since he’d graduated and supposedly became an adult.
There was no supposedly left.
Quinlan trembled in Dustin’s arms because he was a man to tremble for—not a boy who would toy with his heart.
“Hey, you okay?” Dustin tilted his chin up tenderly.
“Yeah.” Quinlan took a step back, still embarrassed. “Just starting to know what Sammy felt like. I’d really like to stop being sick now—I’ve got shit to do.”
Dustin’s filthy laugh chased him out of the bathroom.
“Ass. Hole.”
“I’m sure that’ll get done too.”
Oh Lord. “This is what we get for laughing at your jokes in the eleventh grade!”
“I’ve had almost five years of dirty horny dreams to improve upon those. You know that, right?”
Quinlan almost stopped dead. He was thinking—oh Lord.
Dustin’s naked body, touching his naked body. That’s what he was thinking.
He’d had a couple of lovers—conservative lovers who liked long, slow kisses and hand jobs and quick cleanups. One guy had been good at oral. He and his first lover had given a try at penetration but had given up just when things had gotten interesting.
Nothing about Dustin—not his willfulness, his determination, the sheer physicality he used to dominate a room—nothing hinted that he’d be that kind of lover.
His mouth opened and closed, and Dustin stepped behind him, spanning his ribs with both hands and doing that thing, that dirty-sexy thing with his ear.
Quinlan moaned, a carnal sound that told the entire world his knees weren’t working.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Dustin whispered. “You’re thinking ‘He hasn’t done any of these things—how would he know?’ Right?”
“No-ooo….”
Dustin’s hands moved to his chest, kneading. He pinched a nipple, and Quinlan’s cock began to ache in his loose jeans. “What are you thinking?”
Quinlan couldn’t help himself. For the first time in a week and a half, he was hungry for food. For the first time in his entire life, he was hungry for another man’s body to the point of starvation. “You’d do it right,” he mumbled. “I’m thinking… ahhh….”
Dustin kissed the join of his neck and shoulder, then bit lightly while bending his knees just enough to shove his hand down the front of Quinlan’s jeans and take hold of him.
His hand—callused, strong—kneaded and squeezed, and Quinlan put a hand on either side of the hallway just to keep himself upright.
“Not much�
�� gotta leave soon, Dusty….”
Dustin’s groan was pure frustration. He pulled his hand away and wrapped his arms around Quentin’s chest, shuddering and bucking against his back as he came down.
“Tonight,” he promised.
Quinlan looked to where Dustin’s hands were loosely clasped around his waist. What was left of it. “Don’t you,” he panted, “want to wait… I don’t know… a month or…?”
Dustin bit his ear and then had to hold him up. “You,” he accused, “walked around the pool shirtless for seven years.”
“I was wearing board shorts!” Was he not supposed to go shirtless at the pool?
“Me, Sammy, Cooper—hell, Taylor and Brandon—would all sit and watch you with the kids and say, ‘Hm… been working the lats this year. Deltoids and back muscles, right on.’ You were our objectified sex visual, in oblivious living color, touching-distance away.” He pinched Quinlan’s nipple through his shirt and ground his still-rampant erection against Quinlan’s backside.
“Oh my God! Were Channing and Tino there too, because that would be fantastic!”
“No.” Dustin ignored his sarcasm. “Because they’re old and that would be gross. Which your body most certainly is not.”
“But it is!” Now he was ribs and hip bones and prominent clavicles. He’d seen himself in the mirror.
“But I don’t care,” Dustin hissed. “You, Quinlan. You in my bed. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. Health is good. We’ll work for health again. Right now I just want you.”
He straightened. “Now go get your phone and wallet. I’m going to pull the car around.” He gave Quinlan a peck on the cheek as he passed him. “Tonight,” he promised, voice hard. “We’ve waited plenty.”
THE doctor’s appointment went fairly well. Dustin sat with him during the exam, looked at his weight, took the paperwork about a restorative diet and some things he shouldn’t eat.
“Do you remember what triggered you?” she asked.
Quinlan shook his head. “I think it was a bug—there were a bunch of us on the bus, and we all just got sick at the same time.”
“Hm… fair enough. Basic Gatorade to help replace your electrolytes, lots of healthy carbs—pasta and vegetables—and any protein you can digest. Some people get queasy around chicken or seafood after they’ve been sick. If it makes you queasy, don’t eat it.”
Dustin cracked up. “Hell, I could have told you that!”
The doctor eyed him with amusement, looking a lot like Dustin’s mom, actually. “He’s cute—do you keep him around for entertainment value?”
“He’s like the stomach bug—he’s moved into my house and I can’t seem to shake him.”
“Ooh!” Dustin guffawed. “You’re gonna pay for that!”
The doctor, a thin, tired-looking middle-aged woman with sharply sarcastic eyebrows, tilted her head.
“Eye candy?” she asked quizzically.
Dustin grinned wickedly, an overgrown seventh grader in a Rick and Morty T-shirt. A full-grown man who had nursed Quinlan faithfully after two months of long-distance courtship. Quinlan’s heart swelled.
“Sadly no. It seems to be a relationship.”
“He’ll keep you young, then—and lucky you. I can’t even keep a cat. Hang on to him.”
“I’ll do my best.”
She gave him some vitamin supplements and a prescription for something to soothe his stomach in case it got irritated again. Quinlan took it, but Nica’s tea was damned effective, and since he was still drinking it, he didn’t think the prescription would be necessary.
He and Dustin left the doctor’s office in good spirits, and in spite of the late-August heat, Quinlan held his face to the sun as they were walking through the parking lot.
“So—where to now?” Dustin asked, beeping the door lock.
“I don’t know. Some place out of the heat but….” But his apartment—home—had been sort of a dim prison for the last few days.
“I have an idea,” Dustin said, grinning. “C’mon. My treat.”
“What’s your treat?”
“You’ll see.”
ADOPTION day at the pet store was a surprise. Quinlan held up a medium-sized black-and-tan tiger-striped kitten and peered into its amber eyes. “I am not sure what he was thinking,” he told it. “His family doesn’t do cats. There is a giant dog outside. And I leave two months out of the year.”
The kitten purred, and Quinlan held it close to his chest, sucking up the vibrations. While the cat was there, it decided to lick Quinlan’s wrist, determined to get all the vitamin nutrients from his skin.
“What I was thinking,” Dustin said, approaching with a little nutbar of a fluffy black kitty, “is that I miss the crap out of my sister’s cat, and I can take care of a cat when you go on tour.” He paused, and the cat batted at his chin. “If you go on tour again.”
Quinlan opened his mouth to take exception with the “if” but closed it immediately. All he’d wanted—all he’d wanted—in that hotel room in Kentucky was Dustin and home.
That was all.
Not even his trumpet.
Dustin and home.
He swallowed then, because this next thought was the worst. “But, uh, what if…?” What if Dustin had his way with Quinlan’s scrawny body and decided fantasies were overrated? What if all those years of family made them too familiar? What if—
“If it doesn’t work out, you can keep the cat,” Dustin said softly. “And the garage apartment. I’ll move back in with Belinda and ignore her and Joachim having sex and it’ll be fine.”
“I, uh… I mean, I’m not sure if you’d planned to be there permanently, but, you know. I like you there now.”
Dustin kissed him casually on the cheek. “I like me there too. And this way I can save money.”
“What for?”
“A house for us. Here, let me go talk to this guy in charge. You sit down—you’re looking a little peaked.”
Quinlan sank down into the folding chair, cuddling the creature in his arms protectively, purposefully not thinking about what Dustin had just said. He’d never had a cat. He’d never had any animal. The fish had been his first gambit—he’d gotten them when he’d gotten off tour, after Dustin’s graduation.
He’d wondered then, if he’d been sick, if he’d be missed like Sammy would have been.
A silly idea, he knew—had known then. The kids loved him. He loved them back. Such a pure thing.
A creature that was exclusively his, that would comfort him and rely on him for comfort?
Oh, he’d waited his entire life to own a kitten.
By the time Dustin returned, he had a cart full of stuff that apparently went with kittens, including a carrier, and he’d collected a black-eyed, black-haired Irish alpha male with an amazing chest to help him fill out paperwork.
“So, you ever took home a thing you had to not kill?”
Quinlan shook himself awake. “I’ve been a nanny for seven years?” he said.
Dustin chortled, and the PetSmart guy shrugged and nodded. “Fair enough. How many kids?”
“Well, six to start with, but the third is graduating this year.”
“So you didn’t kill any of them, I think you’re safe. Your buddy here has everything he needs, and he’s forked over the cash for the adoption paperwork and to help pay for the shots and the spay/neuter—”
“Dusty!”
“Shut up,” Dustin said casually. “This isn’t a thing, and we’re not talking about this. It’s a gift.”
“Wow,” PetSmart guy said, nodding. “A gift. Take it. What do you get out of it?” he looked suspiciously at Dustin.
“Look at him,” Dustin said, gesturing at Quinlan. “I mean, cuddling a kitten. He’s adorable.”
“Yeah, well, that one in your hands is gonna skin you alive. I got my guy, our kid, and a turtle. And two cats—but still. I’ll stick with them. Anyway, cute guy with the kitten—sign this shit. Come see me over at that table. Boyfriend—that t
hing you got is going to eat you. Allow me to show you to our generous assortment of toys, doodads, and electronic goodies that will keep that thing from climbing the frickin’ walls.”
Dustin looked at the cart and raised his eyebrows. “You mean there’s more?”
The guy just nodded, rolling his black-lashed dark, dark brown eyes. “We have so much to do.”
“Right on! Back in a sec, Q—fill out that paperwork and we can motor.”
Quinlan nodded and shifted the sleeping fuzzball in his arms. “Wow. It’s like he walked into the void and came out with a gay man as alpha as he was. How does he do that?”
The sleeping kitten slept on, and Quinlan filled in his name, his address, and his information for not one, but two kittens.
Because Dusty had promised.
He’d said he knew what kind of promises Quinlan needed. Quinlan had no idea what he’d meant then—but he was starting to know now.
THEY got to the apartment, and Quinlan napped while Dustin set up the new housemates. In the late afternoon, when the shadows had gotten long, Quinlan woke up hearing “Sh-sh-sh-sh-sh… thump! Meow! Sh-sh-sh-sh-sh… thump! Meow!”
He yawned and stretched and went out to the living room, where Dustin was teasing the nutbar black kitten until it ran off the rug and onto the hardwood—where it immediately lost its balance, and hence the “sh-sh-sh-sh-sh” when it slid into the wall, thump! and complained. “Meow!”
“Ha!” teased Dustin. “See? You thought you had it! Now go get it again!” And he waved his little fishing pole with the feather again and restarted the cycle.
Quinlan watched, partly amused and partly horrified. “That’s awful!”
Dustin looked up and grinned wolfishly. “This is self-defense. That one you picked up can apparently sleep through a hurricane. This one is the hurricane.”
He did it again and again and then, while Quinlan watched, he set up a little contraption in the middle of the living room that shined a revolving red laser on the rug, the walls, and the ceiling.
The kitten exploded into hilarious chaos, and Dustin crossed his eyes and nodded like it was a job well done. “Okay—my mom left food for us. That should wear him out while we’re eating.”