by Amy Lane
“Cramp,” Taylor managed before going to his knees and falling sideways. To his surprise, Brandon rolled him immediately to his back, hands big and capable.
“Left leg?”
“Yes!” Taylor gasped, working hard to push against his heel and aim his toes to his chin in the classic dorsiflex.
“Here, press against my hand.”
Brandon pressed against the ball of his foot with one hand and then—oh God love him—pressed the palm of his other hand along the cramping arch of Taylor’s foot, and as that softened, he pressed his shoulder against the foot and moved both hands to Taylor’s calf, pushing hard until he’d worked the knot of muscle loose.
Taylor’s breaths slowed down, and he allowed himself to melt into the crappy carpet as he tried to see which part of his body was going to react worse to what he’d just done.
“Here,” Brandon said softly, standing and offering him a hand up. “Go lie down and strip to your boxers.”
Taylor took the hand because he had no other choice and found himself supported by Brandon’s arm around his waist as he limped to the bed.
“Maybe I should shower first,” he said, thinking of the bliss of pounding hot water.
“Sure. I’ll help you in and out of the shower, and then I’ll help you dress.” Brandon’s bland tone told Taylor all he wanted to know about how much of a maiden aunt he was being.
Still. “Doh!”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Showers are for men who can walk. Do you have a bathtub?”
“Not that I want to put my bare ass next to.”
“God, Taylor, I swear if you don’t take Tino up on his offer willingly, I’ll move you myself.”
“I am not a child!”
“No, but that doesn’t mean we don’t all need some caretaking, even if we’re, oh God save us, twenty-eight—”
“Nine!”
“Yeah. Twenty-nine years old. Jesus, you’re a pain in the ass.”
“Then go home.” Taylor couldn’t remember ever, in his whole life, feeling this wretched. This embarrassed.
“No,” Brandon said softly. “Here, let me take off your shirt.”
“I smell really bad,” Taylor warned.
“So do I. Remember, neither of us showered after work. It was a hundred degrees today.”
“Conroy had an epic three-wall diaper that may have scarred me for life,” Taylor admitted. “I was playing the entire first game of pool hoping nobody sniffed the air and shouted, ‘Hey! That guy! He smells like baby poop!’ I’ll never be clean again.”
Brandon laughed and stripped off the shirt, careful not to make Taylor raise his game arm too far over his head.
He gasped softly when the scarring came into view, and Taylor hurried up and unbuttoned his cargo shorts to get it over with. They hit the floor with a thump, and he grimaced. “Dammit—my phone.”
“I’ll get it.”
Brandon wrapped his warm hand around the back of Taylor’s thigh as he squatted to pick up the phone. He stood back up, and Taylor indicated the charger sitting on the decrepit end table next to the bed.
The absence of that warm hand hurt when Brandon moved away.
Taylor pulled in a big gulp of air and consciously released it, trying to relax the knot that had formed when his shoulders tightened.
“What was that sigh for?” Brandon asked, turning back around and pulling the bedding down. At least the sheets were clean. And the quilt was something he’d picked up in his travels—all cotton, with bright embroidery and appliques of sheep, chickens, and horses across the front. It had cost a mint to ship it home from overseas, but Nica had put it into his storage facility without a word.
When she’d shown up at the hospital the day of his release, she’d been driving a borrowed truck with all Taylor’s earthly possessions in the back, including this quilt.
“Trying to get the knots out.” Taylor carefully folded back the quilt just a little more.
“Here, I’ll get a towel. Don’t lie down just yet.”
Taylor was still wearing his boxers, but he couldn’t remember feeling more naked. Cramped, hurting—his eye still ached, as did a thousand places on his body that shouldn’t have been fighting tonight but had been caught doing that anyway.
He was relieved when Brandon came bustling back in with a giant beach towel and a bottle of vitamin E and aloe body lotion.
“Is there a pool here?” he asked, spreading the towel over the double bed.
“Yeah. It’s not great, but—”
“But you’re too proud to use the one at Jacob and Nica’s, and the swimming helps your body,” Brandon assessed. “I’m stealing your trunks on the way out of here, by the way.”
They were hanging on the towel rack. Of course.
“Why?” He didn’t resist as Brandon’s broad-palmed hands pushed him down on the towel face-first.
“Because. They have a perfectly nice pool. And kids who would love to play with you. I don’t know how much chlorine they use in whatever they have here, but the smell in the bathroom made my eyes water. That’s bad for your skin.”
“Hence the lotion,” Taylor confessed, and Brandon must have pumped some into his hands, because the comforting almond-cherry smell washed through the room.
“Flowery.” Brandon put those big hands on Taylor’s shoulders and began to work his muscles, and Taylor could have cared less what the stuff smelled like.
“My mother’s smell,” he said, fighting off weakness from every angle. Body weakness, the brittleness in his heart from being alone for so long, his fragile barrier keeping Brandon out when the man—not boy—so insistently wanted in.
“Mm, yeah.” Brandon didn’t stop when the knots came out. He just kept working and working until the muscles were melted butter. “Mine wore something that smelled like plums and violets. Purple. Wears, probably.”
“I should look for man smell.” Taylor pressed his face against the towel and tried not to let his voice get thick. Unbidden, tears of relief from the pain, from touch starvation, fell, and he just could not stop them.
“They have it, but it never seems to be as soft. It’s like they put extra alcohol in man’s smell so it doesn’t work as well.”
“Ugh… ahh… oh damn. Probably my father’s idea. Oh God, kid, really?”
Brandon was working on the withered bicep of his game arm, his touch careful but still firm. “You lost a lot of muscle here,” he commented quietly. “In your shoulder too.”
“The flesh was gone to the bone,” Taylor told him. “I barely kept the arm.” The scarring, thick and twisted, had to be stretched constantly to let the muscle build underneath.
“And the leg?”
“The eye was a fair trade.” It had been. In those months of physical rehabilitation, Taylor had given thanks day in and day out. He could still see colors. He could still drive—during the day was preferable, but he could still drive. He could still walk. He could still…
Hold a man’s body in two capable hands.
Well, he hadn’t dared think about that last one, but he was sure thinking about it now.
Brandon’s hands stopped working for a moment, and he bent and kissed Taylor’s shoulder. “To have you come back so I could meet you? Sure.”
“Kid—”
“Don’t.” Brandon’s voice had grown thick, just like Taylor’s. And now Taylor was grateful he was lying on his stomach, because his tears were falling hot and helpless from his one good eye.
Physical, spiritual, emotional—he’d been in a void for so long. The rush of stimulation around his heart, mind, and body was way more than he’d been ready for.
“’Kay,” he grunted. “I won’t.”
Brandon just kept working on him, his back, his ribs, his arms, his glutes, his thighs, his calves. When he passed the calves, he prodded Taylor to roll over.
By then the tears had stopped falling, but he knew what he’d look like.
“I’m fine,” he mumbled, pullin
g up his knees and rolling over onto his good side.
“This’ll work too,” Brandon decided, and then, bless him, he had Taylor stretch out his leg so he could work his arch and instep again.
Taylor gave a sigh of bliss. “You’ve got good hands.” The thickness was gone from his voice, thank God. “For an engineer.”
“Yeah, well.” Brandon kept working, although his fingers must have been getting tired. “I was going into kinesiology for my first two years in school. Wanted to do this for a living.”
“Mm… why’d you stop?”
Brandon’s quick bark of laughter surprised Taylor. He hadn’t expected bitterness. “My bedside manner is crap—I say more morbid shit than anyone I know.”
“Which puts you right there with the EMTs in the military,” Taylor told him. He’d been “Mr. Bones” for a month in the hospital. But those same guys who’d given him shit when they’d pulled him out of the sand had come to check on him during that month—Taylor could deal with their shitty sense of humor. “Didn’t you want to?”
“Well, yeah!” Brandon sounded surprised, even to himself, maybe. “But there was the coming out, and the weird cold vibe from my folks, and… well, they’d been the ones to suggest kinesiology and all that. So I moved in with Jakey and….”
“Dumped the good stuff about your parents with the bad?”
“Ugh. That sounds mature.”
“Have you met me, ki—Brandon? I seem to be the king of living with bad mistakes I made as a kid.”
“That’s… that’s reassuring, actually.” And the optimism was back. Thank God.
“Reassuring?”
“Well, yeah. ’Cause… ’cause you’re going to take Tino’s help and get out of this apartment, and that’s going to be a mistake you don’t have to live with.”
Oh hell. “Fine.” He didn’t have to be graceful about it.
“And I can look into kinesiology again. I’ve taken a lot of engineering and physics classes that can apply, and the general ed is always helpful. I may only add a year or two to my sentence.”
“You’re really revoltingly happy, do you know that?”
“Here, give me your other foot.”
Taylor fought hard not to melt, drool, and ooze through the cotton sheets.
“And….” Brandon lowered his voice like he was talking himself into something. “And… and tomorrow I’ll go see my dad and mom. And even if they’re jerks about it, I can at least say I tried.”
“I’ll come with you,” Taylor mumbled, because apparently he’d had a big old endorphin rush and was high as a kite. Please let him say no thank you, please let him say no thank you—
“That would be awesome! Thank you, Taylor!”
Taylor was tempted to feign sleep. “Welcome, Brandon. Thank you for….” For taking away the pain. For talking to me like a human being. For touching me voluntarily.
For touching me at all.
“For the massage,” he finished. “Thanks for the massage.”
He felt Brandon’s kiss on his cheek, but he really was close to sleep by then, so he didn’t say or do anything.
He might have smiled.
Adulthood 101
BRANDON didn’t sleep on the couch.
Taylor fell asleep, obviously content in a way he’d not been in a while, and Brandon got up and undressed down to his boxers. The apartment was small and cramped, but the swamp cooler worked pretty well, and he turned that on and adjusted the vents so the bedroom, at least, was cool.
Then he kicked the sheets down to the bottom of the bed and crawled in next to Taylor.
No, he wasn’t planning to attack the guy in his sleep, not that he wasn’t tempted. But baby steps—tonight Taylor had let Brandon touch him, and Lordy, how he’d seemed to need it. Brandon would be happy with that for the night.
Besides, he was tired and achy and they both smelled. Even if Taylor hadn’t had the big physical and emotional suitcases parked next to the bed, Brandon wouldn’t have wanted them to do anything romantic this particular night.
It was enough that Taylor had jumped to his rescue, thrown himself in front of an oncoming tank, and borne the brunt of its fury.
It was enough that Taylor had let him through the front door, let him into this bare, painfully neat apartment with the spoiled Persian cat who ate on the kitchen table because Taylor obviously wasn’t using it.
Right now, this moment, watching Taylor, his face unguarded in sleep as he breathed in peace, was enough.
Brandon shivered and reached down to pull the pretty cotton quilt and the top sheet over their bodies just in time for the cat to jump on the bed with the grace of a sandbag.
“Hello, Marilyn.” The cat sashayed between them and plopped her giant white fuzzy self right at face level. Brandon laughed softly and turned over on his other side, content for the moment. Taylor would come with him the next day. He could live with that.
HE woke up early and texted Nica, then swapped his phone for Taylor’s on the charger and fell back asleep. When Nica texted him back, he had enough time to get out of bed and glare at the phone before he heard her knocking.
He ran to the door and opened it in his boxers, shushing as he did.
“He’s still asleep!” he whispered. “Please, Nica! The guy was a hero last night!”
She stepped inside, holding a pink pastry box in front of her like protection against bullshit, and eyed Brandon’s bruised face with open skepticism. “I see a few bad guys slipped through Captain America’s shield.”
Brandon winked. “Well, he can’t hog all the glory. Did you bring my clothes?”
She swung the bag over her shoulder down to the floor, and he picked it up. “Tino’s waiting outside—”
“Why Tino?”
“Because my husband was apparently also a hero last night, and he’s vegging on the couch with kids in his arms, wishing he was asleep or dead.”
Good for Jacob. “Well, if it’s any consolation, I wish I was with him. Those are good Saturdays.” He nodded seriously as he unzipped the bag and started pulling out clothes. “Especially when someone gets donuts.”
The tiny dimples in the corners of her mouth told him that was exactly her plan, and then she put the pastry box on the table next to his car keys. He kissed her cheek with glee. There were probably a few big versions of this box in the car with Tino.
“Well, he tries to put on a good face about it, but the new baby threw him for a loop too. He’s all about doing everything I want—some nights he gets to get drunk and stupid.” She grimaced. “Or, you know, drunk one night and stupid last night, because he was pretty sober when he got home.”
“The fight wasn’t his fault.” Brandon chuckled softly. “Wasn’t Taylor’s either, but Taylor set himself up to take the worst of it.”
Suddenly Nica was 100 percent sober. “You and Taylor….”
He stopped rummaging through the bag and stood up with what he needed, including his shaving kit. “He fell asleep before he could point me to the couch, that’s all. Two guys lying side by side. Nothing to see here, folks.”
Nica’s eyebrow had that incredible, almost vertical slant some women could achieve. “Sure. Nothing to see. Except you were on a date last night, and I’m dropping off your car and three days’ worth of clothes, including your work clothes for Monday.”
Brandon glanced over her shoulder and saw Taylor hadn’t moved.
“No promises,” he said softly. “I have no promises that anything’s going to happen. Just… just hope, you know?”
She let out a little breath. “Yeah. I know hope. And I know Taylor too. He may have been a player when he was a kid, but he’s grown up. He doesn’t want to hurt you, baby, but he’s damned afraid of being hurt.”
“I know I’m young and stupid, but even I figured that out.”
She grimaced and kissed his cheek—and sighed tiredly. “Okay, I’m going to trust you two to know what’s best. This baby’s kicking my ass. I don’t have the
strength to mother two grown men.”
He gave her a quick one-armed hug. “Go home and veg with your family. You’re looking pretty wrecked. Don’t worry about us.” She was, in fact, looking awfully pale. “When’s your next doc appointment?”
“Next week. And you’re right—need some food that’s not sugar and some sleep.” She paused with one hand on the door. “Be careful, Brandon. Taylor—he’s a good guy, but….”
“Damaged.” Brandon tapped his temple. “Young, not stupid.”
She nodded and left, and Brandon grabbed his clothes and headed for the bedroom and the attached bath.
Taylor pushed himself groggily to one elbow as Brandon came in. “Wazzat Nica?”
“Yeah. She left donuts, but don’t get out of bed ’til you’re ready. I’m going to shower, if that’s okay.”
“Knock yourself out. I mean, be careful on the tile, ’cause it’s all slippery and you might just knock yourself out.”
Brandon grinned and ventured near the bed to run a careful fingertip around Taylor’s swollen eye. “How is that this morning? Obscuring your vision?”
Taylor let out a humorless bark of laughter. “That’s funny.”
“Don’t be an ass. How’s your eye?”
Taylor’s expression was bored, not chastened. “Peachy. Or, you know, patriotic today.”
“Because it’s red, white, and blue—ha-ha. Now do we need to ice it again?”
Taylor flopped back against the mattress. “Kid, you are killing me in that outfit. Could you please go shower so I can shower, and we can pretend you never spent the night on the couch?”
Wonderful. They were doing this again.
Not.
“Sure, I’ll go be naked in your house and covered in hot soapy water. And by the way? I didn’t sleep on the couch last night, and I’m not going to sleep on the couch tonight, and I’m not going to sleep on it tomorrow night. But I am staying here and taking you to Nica’s Monday morning, so you can get your car then. And now you know.”
He charged into the bathroom and wished—just wished—he could slam the door, but he was pretty sure if he did that, the thing would fall off its hinges. Then, if he was judging the situation right, the mirror would fall off the wall and the pedestal sink would fall over, disconnecting the water and sending it fountaining all over the tile, which crackled with dry rot underneath.