by BA Tortuga
Don’t make him feel self-conscious. Don’t make him change his routine. Fit in.
“Uh. Yeah. It’s toasty out here.” Toasty in that actually on fire kind of way.
He followed Tucker to the end of the pool. Maybe if I don’t learn how to swim I’ll have an excuse just to watch.
“It’s still early, but yeah. Come on, let me caffeinate you.” Tucker moved through the space like magic, like it was built for him, which Calvin guessed it had been. He made a point of holding tight to Tucker’s hand so he could look around for landmarks as they went. Anything to help him learn his way.
“Where are all the things for the walls, Tucker? You’ve got a thousand hooks, no paintings.”
“I put them away.”
He nodded. Yep. In a closet somewhere. That was his fault. Fuck. “Well, it makes some room for the new stuff, huh?” Dammit.
“Exactly.” Tucker squeezed his hand. “I want you to be comfortable here. I knew you were exhausted, and this is better. It’s clean and easy. You can rest here.”
He tugged on Tucker’s hand, stopping him, and took a kiss, not really worrying whether Tucker was ready for it or not. “Baby, I….” He checked himself. “You are so thoughtful. Thank you.” But nothing about Tucker was clean or easy, and all this white space wasn’t anything like the man he knew. He didn’t want to make waves, but he didn’t know how he fit into this either. Okay. He’d figure how to talk about it after coffee. Or tomorrow. Maybe another day or two to let things settle, right?
“I love you. All the other shit aside, you’re it for me.” Tucker sat him at the kitchen table and pulled out a pitcher and a gallon of milk. “You hungry?”
Tucker was it for him too. Like, it. There just wasn’t anything else without his tiger. His career was in the toilet right now, God knew. “Got anything that’s not rainbow colors?”
“I have bread and peanut butter and strawberry preserves. I have cream cheese. Your bagels are on the counter….”
“A piece of peanut butter toast sounds good. I can make it.” He got up and stood next to Tucker.
“The toaster oven’s there on the counter. The bread and peanut butter live above it. Knives and forks and spoons below.” Tucker touched his arm, the caress featherlight.
“Thanks.” He covered Tucker’s fingers with his and gave them a squeeze before hunting down the peanut butter.
Once his bread was toasting, he picked up his phone. “Marge texted back a smiley face and said to give you a kiss.” Which he hopped right over and delivered. “Oh, come on. Really?” He frowned at his phone. He had a million texts and two voicemails from Michael. He sighed and texted back that he was fine and on vacation. When Michael came right back, asking how long, why hadn’t he called, he was going to have to reschedule a shoot? Calvin told Michael to give him a month and shut his phone off.
Timmy had Tucker’s number if he was worried.
“Toast is ready!” He found a plate and made his breakfast.
“So is coffee.” Tucker grabbed a remote and clicked and music filled the whole house. Not loud, just everywhere.
“Oh, wonderful. Thank you, lover.” He danced over and picked up his coffee, then danced himself back to the kitchen table.
Tucker watched him like he was magical, like he was simply the most important man on earth. That made him blush. He could feel his cheeks go hot and pink.
“What, tiger?”
“Huh? What?” Tucker grinned at him. “I like seeing you.”
“I like being looked at. I just wondered what you were thinking behind those bright blue eyes.”
“Whether it would be weird to have you sit in my lap, given I’m damp and naked.”
“Nope.” He stood up, toast in one hand, and pointed to his chair.
Tucker grinned, looking young and happy, naked butt hitting the chair with a plop.
Calvin sat right down on Tucker’s knees and smiled at him. “See? Not weird.” He kissed Tucker’s nose and took another bite of his toast. “Good peanut butter.”
Tucker chuckled for Calvin, throat working as he sucked down his coffee. “If there’s anything you want, just tell me. I guessed.”
Mmm. That low chuckle was so smooth, and he loved it. The more laughter of any kind, the better. “I don’t need anything but this.”
Tucker nodded, humming deep in his chest, the sound echoing Eddie Vedder. Okay, that was pretty cool. Even cooler was that Tucker was totally on key. Timmy would be impressed.
He finished off his toast and swallowed it down with some of his coffee, then hummed along too, but a full octave higher.
This was the good stuff, right? This was the stuff that made it worth slogging through everything else.
“Did you find the media room? It’s in the middle, without windows for movies. I took the chairs out and put in a bed.”
“No! I didn’t. How cool.” He’d put in a bed. Of course he had. “A bed instead of chairs. You’re my little hedonist. I like it.” He twirled a finger into the hair over Tucker’s sternum and gave it a very light tug. Just a tiny bit of pressure, though he knew Tucker liked it harder.
“Not much little about me. I like to lay in the bed and watch movies.” Tucker’s eyes twinkled for him.
“All right.” He unwound his finger and smoothed a hand over Tucker’s chest. “Time for my tour. I want to see what you’ve been working on.”
“I can’t. I’m sorry, but… I can’t let you see the new work. It’s ugly.” Tucker touched his face. “Please. I need you to believe that I’m a good man still. I need to just… keep my demons in the barn.”
Calvin set his coffee down before he dropped it. He was completely thrown and couldn’t say a thing, so he just held Tucker’s eyes, keeping that connection solid while he tried to get the rush of emotions under control.
Tucker watched him, letting him see…. God, what did all that mean? He didn’t want to mess this up.
“I love you. I’m a little afraid I’m not understanding exactly what you’re saying, and I’m a little worried I’m going to say the wrong thing here. So I just need you to understand that whatever I say, whatever you hear me say, comes from that place, okay?”
“Okay. I’m not painting you. I swear to God.”
Fuck, tiger.
So he had to hit this head-on, huh? Breathe. Don’t react, breathe. He’s worried. You can see he’s worried.
He got up, though, because they were sitting way too close for this much emotion, and he didn’t want Tucker to see his hands shaking.
“What you choose to paint isn’t up to me.” He spoke carefully, because the truth was still difficult for him to accept. He felt like they both needed to hear it again.
“What you choose to paint is not up to me. That’s the really hard lesson I learned after you left. I don’t have to like your choices. I don’t have to approve. I don’t get to tell you what to paint and what not to. But if you love me, then I deserve all of you. You don’t get to decide what parts of you I get to see either.”
He moved close again, running a hand over Tucker’s shoulder. “I don’t know how to love you in pieces, baby.”
“I don’t want you to think my soul is ugly.” Tucker’s hand covered his. “I want to be fine for you.”
Okay. That was easier, right? He knew what to do about that. He straddled Tucker’s knees and sat down, tilted Tucker’s chin up so their eyes met.
“Try something with me? Close your eyes.”
Tucker lifted one eyebrow but closed his eyes without question, proving that the trust was right there, strong and unwavering.
Good. Perfect. “We had a lot of great days together in New York, but you remember the day we went ice skating? That was one of the best.” He pulled off his T-shirt and dropped it, then took one of Tucker’s hands in his and placed it on his chest. “The wind in your hair, you remember that feeling? The little bit of speed? How much fun we were having?”
Calvin remembered all of that himself and let
his eyes close as his heart started to beat faster and stronger in his chest.
“It was the best day I’ve ever had.”
Calvin could hear Tucker’s smile.
“Me too. And to me, you were more beautiful to me that day than any day before. But it wasn’t just your smile and the way the cold air made your cheekbones pink, Tucker. It was because I asked you to try it, and you did. It was because you took my hands and just trusted me.”
He was smiling too. And he hoped Tucker heard what he was saying. He pressed Tucker’s hand tighter to his chest in case the feeling of his heart trying beat out of his chest wasn’t obvious enough. “You trusted enough to let me teach you, and you trusted that I wasn’t going to let you fall.”
Tucker’s fingers pressed against his skin, the solid hand trembling for him. “I believe in you, honey. Like your soul. You… you make things better.”
He opened his eyes. “Good. I want to. Open your eyes and look at me.” He held his breath. All he wanted was to see those eyes bright again, like they had been that day in Bryant Park. They had shit to work through, but for this moment, he was hoping, like the little painting sitting in his luggage, that maybe he could prove something to Tucker too.
Tucker stared right at him, right into him, and then Tucker’s lips twitched in a smile. “Hey.”
Oh, I know you.
He wasn’t wasting a second of this. “Your soul is beautiful, Tucker. I know, because I’m looking at it. No one, nothing, is perfect. I don’t even want perfect. I want you. You will always be beautiful to me. Trust me.”
“I—” Tucker held on to him. “Shit, honey. I’ll crack right down the middle like a dropped plate if I lose you again. I hope you’re right.”
“I’m right.” He said it like he believed it, and he did, mostly. He had to. “Tucker, whatever’s going on in your work, your mind, whatever it’s ever been, you have always taken care of me. You won’t hurt me, ever. I believe that. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Good.” Tucker wrapped one hand around his hip, thumb drawing little circles. “Just let me hold you two shakes and I’ll show you the barn.”
“Don’t rush. We can just breathe a little.” He put his arms around Tucker’s shoulders and kissed him.
“It’s easy to forget that part. I feel like it’s been weeks.”
“You took my breath with you when you left New York. I’m sorry I didn’t understand. I couldn’t see past being angry.”
“Yeah. I sorta lost my shit a little bit, after.”
“Marge told me you smashed everything.”
Tucker nodded but dropped his gaze and flushed. “They were garbage.”
He knew Tucker didn’t mean for him to take it the way he did, but those words left him breathless. He felt like he’d been stabbed in the chest. “No. They weren’t. That’s my fault, Tucker. I made you feel that way.”
“Bullshit.” Tucker rolled his eyes and swatted his butt. “I got a temper, and I know it. It suited me to hurt myself and wreck them. I’m not proud of it, but I know me. It won’t be the last time.”
Good to know.
He wasn’t going to argue which one of them had been more of an idiot that night because the answer was obviously both of them. And it got worse from there—Tucker with those pretty but meaningless pictures and him not answering a single one even to ask what the fuck was up.
“So neither of us does pissed off well. Fine. I’ll make you a promise, though. If we lose our shit, I’m not walking to the airport.” He grinned, tried to play a little. They’d been mired in this long enough.
“Honey, I’m not sure you can even find the maze room, much less walk to the airport.”
Oh, little tease.
“Well, if the walls weren’t all white and had some art hanging on them, I might have a landmark or two to go by. You better get busy.” He hopped up. “I think I’ll live dangerously and risk a sunburn on the way out there.”
“Turkey.” Tucker’s laugh rang out, echoing through the house. “I’ll just show you where things are, and you can hang what you want. Then I’ll be lost.”
“Ha! Don’t dare me, tiger. I’ll do it.” He would too. It would keep him busy when Tucker disappeared into his work. He knew it would happen, just as he knew there were ways he could coax Tucker away when he needed to so they could eat, sleep, fuck, swim… all their good stuff too.
“Come on, I’ll show you around. I’ll even put on pants.”
“If you must.” He scooped his T-shirt off the floor, intending to drop it in the bedroom while Tucker changed. He had a month off at least, right? He could totally get a tan.
“Maybe just something soft and comfy. Come on, honey. Wander with me.”
Chapter Twenty
TUCKER FELT like he’d been scrubbed on the inside, like something had happened to his heart that he didn’t have the words to understand, and he itched for a pencil, just something to help him understand, something to make it right, but….
But on the other hand he didn’t want to.
He didn’t want to process it.
He didn’t want to paint it and change it and make it anything.
Ice skating, he told himself. This is ice skating. You can’t paint it away and make it less real.
He found a pair of ancient gym shorts and tugged them on, then wrapped one arm around Calvin’s waist and led him to the window. “You see that big live oak? There’s a tree house there that my pappy and daddy made me when I was little. I used to sleep up there all summer long.”
Calvin stepped even closer to the window to look and gave him the smile of a six-year-old. “Is it still stable? We’re totally doing that one night.”
“It is. I went up to watch lightning bugs the other day.” They didn’t photograph worth a shit.
“Done, then. Soon.” Calvin ducked back under his arm.
“Soon. Come on, we’ll see the rest.” The house was big—a little over seven thousand square feet, all told, and it was a little crazy, the way it had become itself. He always pretended Granny’s house was like the Winchester Mystery House, but with Texan sensibility.
“So, wait. The original part of the house was where? Back by the kitchen?”
He liked that Calvin seemed much more interested in trying to piece together the history of the place. The details of how all the different rooms were added on seemed way less important than why.
“Yeah. The original house is where the front door and the kitchen are. It was just tiny.”
“Have you added on anything?”
“The pool and hot tub.” Those were the important things. He’d wanted those bad. “The deck. I modified the barn. I added the maze and the walls and the media room.”
“The deck is fantastic. What a view.” Calvin slipped away from him, getting ahead of him. “What’s in this room?”
“Lots of them are empty or like Granny left them. Some are storage. You’re welcome to explore. There’s some neat old shit in some of them.”
“I will explore. Lots of time for that. Let’s go see what you did to the barn.” Calvin’s arm circled his waist. “I know you’re worried. You should go first if you need to… and I can come in a bit? I don’t want you to think I’m just being nosy. I’m not trying to trap you.”
“It’s not getting any cleaner. It’s….” How could you describe a building that could be his own personal hell or his salvation? A place he hated and needed and loved and despised? How did you make that make sense to someone else when you were pretty sure it didn’t make sense at all? “It’s a studio. There’s lots of mess.”
“Okay, tiger.” Calvin’s fingers threaded into his.
He nodded and led Calvin outside, then stopped to slide on his flip-flops. “I had to put in a commercial AC and heat pump. The space is huge.”
The barn had housed Pappy’s horses, once upon a time, but now it was… something transformed. Birds and darkness and huge spotlights, tools and wood and canvas and paint sunk deep in the
packed dirt.
“Whoa. Sun feels great on my back, but it’s pretty damn hot out now.” Calvin sauntered along beside him, babbling. Sounding scattered. Tucker knew what that meant. “I brought sunscreen. I’d better use it when we’re out for more than five minutes or I’ll fry.”
“Yeah. You should have seen me a few weeks ago. I was blistered. I fell asleep by the pool and woke up in a whole world of hurt.” He’d welcomed it at the time, but he wasn’t going to tell Calvin that. Well, okay. The burned nutsac? He hadn’t welcomed that. That had sucked in the worst way.
“Shit, and you’re tan. I’m probably blinding in the sunshine. It’s nice in a weird way, though. Being reminded to have respect for the sun.”
“I think you’re lovely. I’m coarse next to you.” It was actually hot as hell, and he loved that Calvin got that too.
“Yeah well, remember that in a couple of weeks when I haven’t gotten my mani-pedi, my eyebrows, and my manscaping done.” Calvin laughed. “I’m totally tanning while I’m here.”
“They have all that here, I have no doubt. I’ll run you into town.” Tucker patted Calvin’s ass and pushed the barn doors open, the place feeling like an icebox after the outside.
“Goose bumps!” He watched Calvin shiver at the cold and take maybe ten steps inside, then closed the doors behind them. Calvin was silent, just taking everything in.
“I don’t know what to say that isn’t weird and chattery, so I’m going to just… work on Pandora’s box. Okay?”
“Pandora’s box? Is that a metaphor?” Calvin moved toward him with a soft smile.
“No. No, come see. I needed a break, so I started making this. It opens and everything.” He grabbed Calvin’s hand, hitting the spots. “See? It has multiple lids, each one opens to a deeper level, and in the center? There’s going to be a secret!”
“Oh wow.” Calvin started playing with the different lids, opening and closing and peering inside, looking every bit as excited about it as he was. “This is so cool! What’s the secret going to be? Oh. It wouldn’t be a secret if you told me!”
“I don’t know yet. I keep waiting for it to show.” He ran his hand over the side of the box, feeling the tiny words carved there. Love and need, care and wonder. Secrets. Faith.