“Damn it. I still can’t smell anything but the fucking drugs in the back of my throat.”
Gideon pulled the mug of broth out of the microwave and nudged a package of crackers in Dane’s direction. “Maybe you need to give it some competition.”
“Maybe.”
Dane selected a cracker and sniffed; then he licked the salt off. After biting it, though, he gagged and put it down. “It’s like cardboard.”
With a sigh, he picked up the mug. More than a sip couldn’t have passed his lips before he got grayer, then ran to the bathroom. Gideon followed the retching sounds to find him huddled on the floor, cradling the porcelain bowl.
He made a mental note to up the cleaning service visits to three times a week.
“Don’t say anything,” Dane warned.
Gideon held up his hands in surrender.
Dane leaned back against the wall. “I know you went to a lot of trouble making the rice pudding.” His voice was almost robotic and completely unlike him. “But I don’t want to ruin my taste for it when I feel like this, so can you just…?” He waved a hand.
Gideon nodded. After putting a layer of plastic wrap over the dish, he shoved it in the back of the fridge and went to get the bag Theo had dropped off. It was time for the big guns.
Dane looked up when Gideon came back in, joint and lighter in hand.
“I thought you were a sworn officer of the court, counselor.”
Gideon had smoked his last joint at fifteen, when he realized it would be entirely too easy to blur out the shitty reality of his life on that comforting rush of mellow. That blur wasn’t going to help him—or Bek—get out of his father’s house, so he’d stopped. Stopped drinking too, in a terror that he’d end up as out of control as the old man. That self-imposed prohibition hadn’t lasted as long as the one he was about to break now.
“Desperate times and all that. For you, it’s medicinal.” He brought the joint to his nose, inhaled.
“And for you?”
“Mentally medicinal.” He put it in his mouth and flicked the lighter, the motion as familiar as if there hadn’t been twenty years in between.
His lungs felt the difference, though, and he had to release the smoke long before he would have back then.
“Theo’s errand?” Dane asked.
Gideon nodded as he handed it off. Dane’s glance seemed to measure the distance to the toilet and its proximity to Gideon’s shoes.
“What the hell, probably won’t make me feel worse.” Dane took a long pull.
Sprawled on the floor, pale from sickness, Dane sucking on a joint was still one of the sexiest things Gideon had ever seen.
Dane blew out his breath, and they both waited for an explosion. After a cautious moment, Dane took another hit and then passed it back.
Gideon thought about declining the offer, but any kind of conflict seemed like a waste right then.
While Gideon was inhaling, Dane said, “I’ve seen you drink, but other than graduation night, I’ve never seen you drunk. What are you like stoned?”
Gideon shrugged. “Guess we’ll find out.”
Dane smiled. “Now that’s definitely worth staying awake for.”
“If you’re tired, I promise to recreate it for you later.”
“Nah.” Dane reclaimed the joint and held out a hand for the lighter. “I might actually be getting some sense of smell back.” He wrinkled his nose and leaned forward to flush the toilet.
“Then let’s move the party somewhere else.” Gideon climbed to his feet and offered Dane his hand.
Dane pushed up off the toilet instead and tottered to the couch.
“How’s your stomach?” Gideon asked after another few rounds.
“It may no longer hate me. Which seemed too much to hope for earlier. How much did Theo get?”
“He scrounged two joints and then got lucky with an eighth.”
“Eighth?” Dane’s eyes laughed as he shook his head. “You must have been quite a little delinquent.” His amusement turned into a blast of laughter.
The sound was so sweet it drew a smile to Gideon’s lips. “You have no idea. C’mere.” He turned the roach around, pinching lightly between his teeth. Slinging an arm around Dane’s neck, Gideon brought their mouths together.
With a long exhale, he shotgunned a lungful of smoke between Dane’s lips. Yeah, his thinking was fuzzy, but for a moment he felt they were sharing a body, like fucking only deeper, dizzier.
He let Dane go.
“Fuck.” Dane released a stream from his nose. His eyes stayed fixed on Gideon’s mouth.
One of them must have moved then because in something like a dream, they were kissing. Really kissing. Something completely new.
That couldn’t be true because they kissed all the time. Even when they weren’t—Gideon enjoined a mental giggle—married. They kissed casually, hello and good-bye. They kissed hard and wet when they were tearing at clothes to get to each other’s dicks. This was endless, like breathing together, no end to it. Until Gideon seized on the idea that he was still holding Dane and filling his lungs with smoke, that he’d only imagined letting him go, and pulled away in a panic.
Dane looked at him in confusion, then plucked the joint from Gideon’s fingers.
“Give me the roach before you burn your fingers.” Gideon fished some change out of his pocket and gripped the end between two quarters.
“Such a juvenile lawbreaker.” Dane’s chuckle eased away the tension of that momentary dread. He wasn’t held down, choking under Gideon’s hold. Dane took hold of the improvised clip. “Do you cringe at the memory of your wild days?”
Dane held the pieces of his past in easily retrievable files, he’d explained once. Nothing special, only good associative linking. Gideon’s was more like recurrent nightmares he wished he had the ability to repress. But even stoned, he had enough control to limit himself to a shrug.
Sometime during the second joint, they ended up on the floor in front of the couch in a T-shape. Dane pillowed his head on Gideon’s belly, the rest of him stretching under the coffee table.
Dane passed back the joint but didn’t let go of Gideon’s hand, curling their fingers together where they lay on Gideon’s chest. Unwilling to let Dane’s hand go, Gideon freed the one trapped beneath long enough to snuff out the joint, then settled it back where Dane was comfortable.
“I think I had it coming,” Dane said with a sigh.
Gideon was pretty sure he knew what Dane was talking about, but rather than dig himself a hole, he asked, “Had what coming?”
“The cancer. Like a curse.”
Gideon wished he could take another hit, but finding the lighter would be too much effort. “You don’t deserve cancer, Dane. Hell, no one does.”
Dane went on like Gideon hadn’t spoken. “Yeah. I did. I had too much. Too much. I had you and Spencer, and any piece of ass I wanted. I traveled all over and got to do work that mattered. I was greedy. Like hubris.”
“So you think one of the gods punished you?”
Dane turned his grip so his thumb stroked along the calluses on Gideon’s palm. “You know I don’t believe in robes and thunderbolts, but I have to feel like there’s more than what we can see. Call it Fate. I tried to have too much, so now I’m cursed.”
That wasn’t the kind of thinking that was going to get Dane through six more chemo treatments.
“Bullshit.” The force of the words made Gideon’s diaphragm dip, shifting Dane’s head.
Dane’s shoulders shrugged against Gideon.
He dug out a less morbid distraction. “My dad told me the DeLucas were cursed. Well, it was more like a warning.”
Dane’s head rolled, but Gideon couldn’t see his face through their hands. Just as well, Gideon had never meant to tell Dane this. With any luck, he wasn’t actually speaking out loud now. Though Gideon didn’t put much stock in luck. Or gods.
The DeLuca curse, though, that he could believe. He had proof.
; He went on, “He was talking about my mom.” Gideon understood now why she’d left. She shouldn’t have had to put up with Dad beating on her. But Gideon hated her too, wherever she was. She could have taken him and Bek. She could have come back for them. He’d been waiting for that until the day he turned eighteen.
Dane’s hand tightened on Gideon’s, pressing their palms together.
Shit. Gideon was actually going to say this. “He told me he’d heard it from his dad, and so on. DeLuca men, he said, only ever fall in love once. And fall hard.”
Gideon waited for Dane to fling his hand away. Or to wander off on a tangent about hard men.
When he didn’t, Gideon dove in the rest of the way. “So, he told me to be careful. I was fourteen, and he handed me a box of condoms.” Gideon had thought he’d piss himself in terror, that his father knew he was queer and was going to kill him. That the condoms were bait to some trap to get him to reveal it.
Dane was so still, Gideon would have sworn Dane was holding his breath.
Gideon finished. “All my life I can’t remember him giving me any advice but this. ‘Use ’em, so some bitch doesn’t trap you with a kid. Fuck ’em, but for Chrissakes don’t fall for one. That woman will own you for life.’”
Dane’s hard head rolled painfully up Gideon’s sternum, but the real ache was deep underneath. Shit. How could he have said all that out loud?
“Then I guess it’s a good thing for you.” The soft expression in Dane’s eyes made the ache spread far and wide, almost worse than a kick in the ribs.
“What is?” Gideon’s heartbeat had become a gong in his ears, like his alarm clock. Please, Jesus, let it be his alarm clock. He’d fallen asleep and dreamed that stupid confession.
Dane stretched until their lips met in a gentle kiss. “That you’re gay.”
Chapter 14
“I DIDN’T know you could cook,” Dane said around a mouthful of rice pudding. Rich custard on his tongue, cinnamon and vanilla in his nose. Food. He’d missed it.
Gideon looked at him across the kitchen counter. “I never said I could. But I can read.”
“Huh.”
Dane knew that some of the extra delight in inhaling first the crackers and chicken broth and then dessert had to do with the munchies courtesy of the THC in his body, but damn, it was good to eat.
They were scooping spoonfuls out of the baking dish, but Gideon had stopped after a couple bites to drag his spoon tip across the thick lines of cinnamon on top, creating tiny, barren stripes.
Dane sucked on his own spoon for a moment. He would cop to quite a few faults, but being stupid wasn’t one of them. He knew what Gideon’s curse story had been about, what he wanted from Dane. Gideon’s studied disdain might have hidden the truth before, but living together made Gideon’s unchanged feelings as inescapable as Gideon himself. Dane just didn’t have it in him to offer what Gideon was asking for. This soul-mate, eternal-love thing would never make sense to him. It would be far worse to promise it all and then fail to live up to it. Gideon deserved better. Dane had half hoped, but mostly dreaded, Gideon would figure that out some day.
Dane tried to find something he could offer. “Well, since you can read so well, maybe we should have Theo and Jax over for brunch on Sunday.”
Gideon stuck his spoon into the center of the dish like a spear. “With their plus-ones? Or in Jax’s case, that’s now a plus-three.”
Dane tapped lightly against his teeth. “Hmm.” He glanced around Gideon’s loft. Lots of glass, nothing remotely appealing in the way of toys, unless there was a gaming system hidden that Dane didn’t know about. “Have you met them, the kids?”
“I’ve avoided it so far.”
“I suppose….” He gave the area another study, brain locked on his new project. “Coloring books?”
Gideon snatched his spoon and Dane’s soup mug and turned away to clang the objects into the dishwasher. “If you’re bored enough that the company of toddlers seems refreshing, I’ll buy them Barbie’s Dreamhouse, and you can all play to your hearts’ content.”
Dane worked that through. His usual translation for the Gideon-impaired was working more slowly than normal due to the still-pleasant high.
“There’s nothing wrong with my current company. I thought you might want to do something couple-y.” Dane rifled through his compromised vocabulary and couldn’t find anything better than “couple-like.”
Gideon straightened and turned back. The very slight expression of confusion in the ripple of his brows had Dane fishing again.
“Like a couple,” Dane said with triumph. “Because we are one now.”
Gideon leaned back against the dishwasher, and Dane knew he’d gotten it wrong.
I’m trying, damn it.
He scooped up some more rice pudding in defense.
“If I understand your stoned ramble, you think hosting brunch with Theo and Jax and their assorted affiliations would somehow delight me because of the paper we signed to put you on my health insurance.” Gideon’s face was blank, but something about it let Dane read it as empty instead of controlled.
“Not exactly?”
Dane thought Gideon would stomp away in full retreat, but there was an advantage to living together in the loft. He couldn’t get far.
Gideon’s voice was softer than Dane expected. “And before we were coupled—” Gideon paused to give the word extra weight. “—how much delight did you see me taking in other social occasions?”
Dane snorted, then choked on his pudding. “How much delight do you take in anything?”
“Good answer, good answer.”
A blast of laughter at the familiar refrain from Family Feud sent what was left of the food in Dane’s mouth spewing out—though just into his hand, and just from the force of his humor. He couldn’t stop laughing, and Gideon’s half smile sent Dane’s amusement deeper. It felt wonderful.
Dane laughed until his stomach ached, until he couldn’t keep his balance on the barstool facing the counter. Gideon was there as he slipped off, and they sank to the floor. Gideon’s warm, breathy chuckles tickled Dane’s ear. That felt even better. When had he ever heard Gideon laugh like that? The sound, the too-rare joy from Gideon, doubled the high buzzing in Dane’s head.
Food. Laughter. Love. And lots of sex. Dane might not be able to give Gideon everything he deserved, but maybe this could be enough.
Chapter 15
OVER THE next couple rounds of Dane’s chemo, Gideon learned to carry the bowl in the car. The antinausea injection didn’t seem to do much good. Not being able to crawl out of bed went from twenty-four hours to seventy-two, even with medicinally sanctioned marijuana. Gideon had enough time and goodwill banked to work more hours from the loft, only making the trip up for meetings.
Gideon glanced up from typing as he heard Dane shuffling around, all the way into the kitchen to open the fridge. It was a Tuesday after a treatment, the longest it had taken for him to find the energy to do more than drag himself to the bathroom or from the bed to the couch.
Listening carefully for any indication that Dane’s steps were too uneven for solo navigation, Gideon tracked the sounds of water into a glass. He maintained the speed of his typing, the brief he was working on something he could do in his sleep.
The steps came over to Gideon’s desk, and he allowed himself a good look, maintaining his blank face through Herculean effort. Dane was huddled under the throw, a tan knit hat on his head. His skin was drawn over his cheeks, thin as paper, summer tan turned an awful shade, something like stage makeup seen too close up.
But it was Dane’s eyes that made Gideon have to fight the hardest to keep everything locked behind that mask. They were almost without sheen, appearing both bigger and smaller as they sank into their sockets.
Gideon managed to keep his voice matter-of-fact. “Do you want to work on your project for a while? I can take a break.”
“No.” Dane reached up and tugged off the cap.
His thinn
ing hair had dropped away in clumps over the past two weeks. Now, there were a few straggled patches. Gideon had to clench his fists to keep from snatching at one of the shiny curls stuck to the hat, to tuck it away in his pocket like some Victorian mourner.
“It’s time,” Dane said. “Let’s go to your barber. If he can make you look good under that shorn-sheep cut you wear, I suppose I can trust him to shave me.”
Making the decision to marry Dane had been easy, even knowing the risk in sharing space, the compromise in privacy. This particular exposure was something Gideon hadn’t foreseen, but he sucked it up. When Dane took himself off to the shower, Gideon called for an appointment.
Bold was in a part of Hell’s Kitchen still awaiting gentrification. Dane had already been giving Gideon a lot of side eye as the taxi drew to a stop, but now that Gideon headed for a dark-tinted glass door in what looked like a squat brick warehouse, Dane jerked to a halt.
“You brought me to a bathhouse?” he demanded, putting his hands over his cap as if someone was about to tear it from him.
“No,” Gideon sighed and opened the door, prepared for endless mockery.
“Mr. DeL—Archer,” the greeter in the foyer corrected herself swiftly. “And, Mr. Archer, welcome to Bold.” She stepped out from behind her steel standing desk. “An attendant will be right with you. What can I get you to drink?”
“Espresso with lemon for me,” Gideon told her as he watched Dane scan the entry room. If the back wall of exposed brick holding a steel plate with raised lettering announcing “Bold, a Spa and Salon for Gentlemen” wasn’t sufficient information, the decor of antique barber supplies blended with shelves holding grooming products would have been more than enough of a clue.
“You—” Dane broke off as the greeter waited for his order. “Any kind of green tea is fine. Wait. Nothing with ginger.”
“Certainly, Mr. Archer.”
She exited through the door behind her desk.
“You sneaky, subversive… hedonist.” Dane hissed the word at Gideon like a curse.
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