Gideon shrugged helplessly.
“Does Theo know? Does Jax?”
Gideon shook his head. “As far as I know, they’ve never been here. I certainly didn’t tell them about it.”
“So this is where all that repression comes out?” Dane wandered around and picked up a bottle from one of the shelves, then set it down quickly. “I assume if I have to ask the price—”
“Exactly,” Gideon said.
The greeter returned with small black porcelain cups on a brushed-steel tray.
As Dane took his cup, the greeter said to him, “Mr. Archer made a full three-hour reservation for you, sir, and you can discuss the details of your body treatment with the masseur, but if you could select what you’d like from the aesthetician, she’ll be better prepared to offer the best service.”
Dane took the leather-bound menu from the greeter and turned to mouth “Aesthetician?” at Gideon.
Gideon wasn’t sure if Dane was just repeating it in mockery or as a genuine question. Gideon brushed a hand across his face in answer.
If Dane was trying to control his smirking, though, he failed. Completely. Stepping close enough to share the menu of facial treatments with Gideon, Dane deadpanned, “What do you recommend, dear? Your pores are always immaculate.”
“Any package can, of course, be tailored to your requirements, sir.” The greeter exchanged a glance with Gideon. “With the Afternoon Invigoration, I’ll be certain that the aesthetician uses our citrus astringent instead of the one with the ginger base.”
Gideon observed Dane’s flinch at the word ginger.
Apparently ginger was everyone’s fabulous idea when contemplating debilitating nausea. From Gideon’s paralegal to Theo’s Aunt Tessa, they’d been buried under gifts of and recipes for ginger syrup, tea, candy, cookies, gum, and soda.
Dane had threatened to find a flamethrower if Gideon didn’t get the crap out of the loft and had taken to muttering, “Gonna punch someone, I swear,” every time someone suggested a ginger derivative in his presence.
Dane accepted the suggestion for the Afternoon Invigoration with citrus astringent substitute. The greeter passed him a decorative clipboard, and Gideon sucked in his lips, hoping Dane wouldn’t explode.
“Your doctor’s office faxed permission for a light massage from a licensed therapist, but we just need you to look over this form and sign it, Mr. Archer.”
Dane blinked. Twice.
Gideon waited.
As Dane scanned the form, he mumbled, “I’m starting to have serious regrets about what permissions I grant certain lawyers to my motherfucking business. You’re lucky I like massages.”
The greeter pretended polite deafness, and Dane signed.
The attendant arrived.
As the man in the gray tunic and slacks tried to lead Dane away, he looked back over his shoulder at Gideon. “What? No couple’s massage on our honeymoon?”
Gideon refrained from mentioning that he had a membership that allowed him to visit the sauna, steam room, hydrotherapy, and meditation rooms any time. He could picture Dane’s reaction to the idea of Gideon meditating. Actually, he just liked the ruthlessly enforced quiet and cell phone ban.
Two hours later, Gideon waited for Dane in the salon. Maybe Dane would have preferred to say good-bye to what was left of his hair on his own, but Gideon wanted to be there, despite the need to harden his resolve to not grab any clippings out of maudlin sentiment.
Dane was smiling when the attendant led him in to meet Freddy, the stylist. “I swear there is a god of cancer patients, and it’s that masseur. I feel so much better. And look—” He leaned toward one of the mirrors. “—no more Halloween mask a week early.”
His eyes had some shine, and the skin no longer looked like wallpaper in need of replacement. The dark circles under his eyes remained, but a casual observer would probably just think he was tired.
Despite being wrapped in the gray salon robe, he wore his hat. He climbed into the chair with more ease than Gideon had seen in days and gripped the folded brim.
Letting out a long breath, Dane said, “Okay. Let’s do this,” and yanked off the hat.
Gideon had seen him often enough without the familiar brown knitted lid, and had warned Freddy. Still, in a hall of mirrors, it was a painful sight.
Freddy immediately looked down and began fiddling with some of his tools. It wasn’t fair, Gideon knew, it wasn’t his damned hair, but it made him want to weep at the loss, the spring in them, the silky touch, the shades of gold from pale sand to metallic. A head full of carefree, cherubic curls was as much of Dane’s personality as his clear green eyes.
Gideon sat in an empty salon chair, having paid the other stylist for his time so Dane wouldn’t have any strangers as an audience.
“Didn’t you say you had dreadlocks once?” Gideon tried to get some conversation rolling as Freddy turned on his clippers.
Dane’s eyes met Gideon’s in the mirror and then closed. “Yeah. It went through a frizzy phase when I hit puberty. At fourteen I had dreads past my shoulders.”
Freddy shuddered.
“It was a lot lighter then too,” Dane said. “Though I was always in the water and the sun.”
“You’re lucky it’s in—it stayed in such good health.” Freddy buzzed through what was left on the back of Dane’s head.
“Then I wanted a Mohawk, was going to dye it pink or purple, but I couldn’t ever get it to stand up straight. It just looked cute.” Dane invested the word with disgusted dismay.
“What’s wrong with cute?” Freddy brushed the hair away from his neck and ears.
Eyes still shut, Dane wrinkled his nose. “I was sixteen. I wanted to look like a badass rebel, and my moms wouldn’t let me wear leather.”
Mama T’s influence, Gideon guessed. She’d been a vegetarian. He bit the inside of his cheek as the last of the curls fell and was dusted away onto the floor.
“What about your father?” Freddy asked.
“He said he hoped I’d make a good choice and then gave me a videotape on the horrors of the beef cattle industry. I couldn’t eat a hamburger for two years.”
Whether or not anyone in the family would admit it, Lance had had his own unique impact on Dane’s personality, not just his politics.
Freddy looked at Gideon in the mirror, pulling his gaze from the magazine he’d put in his lap to pretend to read. Gideon shrugged with his eyebrows.
“What did your father have to say about your badass rebel days?” Freddy went over Dane’s head with the clippers one more time.
“Oh, he said rebellion and separation from parental authority was completely age-appropriate, but that he’d expected my personal rebellion to take a more conservative bent as I broke from the highly liberal underpinnings of my family.”
Gideon recognized both Dane’s style of direct quoting a moment from his past and Lance’s socio-psycho-behavioralist bullshit.
Freddy wrapped a steaming towel around Dane’s head, inducing a sigh of pleasure. Dane had not yet opened his eyes. Gideon wondered if that would continue until he put his hat back on. He flipped a page in the unread magazine.
Dane made another sound of pleasure, one that went directly to Gideon’s balls, when Freddy started massaging something into his scalp.
“They were all surprised when I came out, though Lance—my bio dad,” Dane added for Freddy’s benefit, “tried to claim he’d had his suspicions since I was three and felt I’d been influenced away from a more innate bisexuality by the pair bond of my mothers.”
Freddy paused with a shaving brush raised to receive a dose of cream. Gideon put his tongue in his cheek on the spot he so often chewed.
Bet they don’t cover this in cosmetology school.
“But if they were liberal, and your mothers were gay….” Freddy trailed off.
“Oh, they weren’t disappointed, just surprised. I suspect Lance wrote a paper on it.”
Freddy’s face was bemused as he swirled the
brush over Dane’s skin. “I see.” Meeting Gideon’s eyes in the mirror again, Freddy flung himself onto a safer topic like a man leaping onto a life raft. “When do I see you next, Gideon? You’re looking in need of a trim.”
Safe for Freddy maybe. Jaw tight, Gideon flipped a page. “I’m letting it grow out a little.”
Both Freddy and Dane gasped, and Dane’s eyes shot open. Gideon pretended to be absorbed in an article on the “18 Exercises for the Best Glutes.”
He’d been to two of the agreed-upon ACOA meetings so far. He’d see it through if it killed him—though the rage that boiled in him as he’d left each one made him wonder if he wouldn’t kill someone else first. One of the first things he’d discovered was that not only was his childhood hell far from unique, it wasn’t close to the horror other people had suffered. Perspective had its uses.
Whether his other realization, that of how much of his life was still dictated by his pattern of reactions to his asshole father, was going to be of any help remained to be seen. He’d learned to wear fitted clothes and keep his hair clipped so his father wouldn’t have as easy a time grabbing him. He was not about to adopt sagging pants, but growing out his high-and-tight style was something he could try.
A letting go, they called it in the meeting.
Freddy recovered quickly. “Wonderful. It’s time you tried a new style. But you have to promise me you’ll let me shape it. I can’t have you walking around with a disaster unless you swear to tell people it happened at Superfast Style.”
Gideon agreed. He’d been doling out too many promises lately. Agreeing to Freddy’s help on a longer hairstyle was one thing. As for the rest of Gideon’s ingrained responses…. He bit hard on the inside of his cheek as he watched the stripes of naked skin appear on Dane’s head in the wake of Freddy’s razor.
Those responses were going to be much harder to let go of.
Chapter 16
DANE CAME awake with a glorious, persistent case of wood. He slipped his hand down and gripped the shaft, just that touch making sensation roll sweetly to his balls. Damn if he couldn’t use the distraction, a few moments of bliss.
Gideon had crawled to bed around two, having been working on the computer long after Dane surrendered to the constant plague of exhaustion. Gideon probably needed—wanted—the rest more than sex. Dane could enjoy himself without waking him up.
As he inched away from Gideon, the air drifted over Dane’s head. Over his repulsively naked and shiny skull. He flopped a hand around on the pillow for his hat. Without warning, Gideon’s hand landed on top of Dane’s, stopping his search.
Dane stilled. “Sorry I woke you.”
“It’s fine. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Actually, his nice, hard dick was far from something wrong.
“Mm-hm.”
Dane could hear the eye roll in Gideon’s sarcastic agreement.
Gideon snuggled against Dane from behind, lips brushing the back of his neck. The freshly bare skin tingled. After kissing a line to Dane’s ear, Gideon licked the spot behind it, nose and breath adding more excitement to the exposed flesh, which was unexpectedly erogenous in its baldness.
He pressed a firm kiss over the spot where he and Freddy had told Dane he had a birthmark or mole, strawberry red and roughly heart-shaped. He could find it with a finger, smaller than a dime and barely raised, three inches northeast of his right ear. Freddy had pronounced it cute.
Gideon continued to kiss across the surface of Dane’s scalp. Despite the way the lips made shivers that translated as pulses of pleasure in his dick, Dane said, “You don’t have to do that.”
“What?” Gideon murmured.
“Pretend it’s sexy.”
“Oh.” Gideon grabbed Dane’s hip and dragged him backward to feel the press of Gideon’s erection against his ass. “Because I obviously find you quite repulsive now.”
Relief washed over Dane in a warm, fizzing wave, making him lighter, able to concentrate on nothing but the heavy throb of want in his dick.
“Well, if it’s not too much trouble.” He flexed his hips back and dragged Gideon’s hand where it would do the most good, tight around Dane’s cock.
Gideon stroked him a few times, then rolled away.
The sound of the nightstand drawer scraping open was followed by the flip of the cap on the lube, sounds linked in Dane’s head as closely as successive songs on a favorite playlist.
“I’m not sure I’m up—” Dane smiled at his inadvertent pun. “—in the right condition for getting fucked.” And he definitely didn’t think he had the energy to top or offer anything but the most sloppy of blow jobs.
“It’s okay.” Gideon rolled back, his palm silky slick over Dane’s cock. “I’ve got you.”
Gideon’s dick was slippery too, gliding between Dane’s thighs, rubbing his perineum, his balls as it thrust forward. Dane pressed his thighs together more tightly, and Gideon groaned in his ear.
Gideon held him, arm underneath Dane’s, coming up to press him close, hand stroking faster, the tug timed with the thrusts between his thighs. Pressure on his balls, on his taint, and Gideon’s familiar, steady rhythm on the shaft.
Dane lost himself in the slide and stretch of skin, head dropping back to feel the prickle of Gideon’s hair, alien contact on Dane’s scalp. It sent a puff of dread rising from his belly like a smoke signal.
You’re ugly now. It’s a pity fuck. He’s just doing what Gideon does, taking care of you because you need him.
It froze everything. Dane covered Gideon’s hand, intending to fling it off and curl around the self-pity gnawing at his insides.
“It’s okay,” Gideon whispered in his ear. “It’s all okay. I’ve got you, baby.”
Baby. A shock of unfamiliarity blasted away Dane’s misery. Gideon never called him anything but Dane or Archer. Hell, Dane had never heard Gideon use an endearment on anyone or anything.
It shouldn’t have meant so much, but it did.
Dane eased back into that exquisite climb, his body tightening, as the pleasure rebounded, doubled, tripled.
As the next stroke took him over the top, Dane arched back against Gideon, shuddering through every spurt. Dane’s nose twitched at the chemical stink in his jizz, but then Gideon grunted softly in his ear.
“Oh fuck. Fuuuuck.” Gideon’s hips bucked as he bathed Dane’s balls in warm spunk, drowning out that intrusive smell with the sweet familiarity of them together.
Come. Sweat. Gideon.
He must have drifted back to sleep right away, because he came awake to Gideon wiping up the sheet and Dane’s thighs with a towel. Light from the bathroom added enough illumination to let Dane get a good look at Gideon’s face.
It reminded Dane of his own before the Afternoon Invigoration, eyes dark pits sunk with exhaustion, cheeks too sharp under his skin.
“What?” Gideon tossed the towel to the floor and climbed back into bed.
Dane favored the truth. But “you look like shit warmed over” was a pretty hard one when Gideon looked like that because he was doing two full-time jobs. Getting Dane through the damned chemo was supposed to mean both of them were alive at the end of it.
“You left the bathroom light on,” Dane substituted. It was still the truth.
“Fuck it. If you’re that concerned with the carbon footprint, go get it yourself.” Gideon’s snarl was reassuringly him.
His breathing deepened almost as soon as his head hit the pillow, but Dane lay awake. The image of Gideon’s haggard face refused to be sorted into its file, haunting Dane and separating him from sleep.
DANE FOUGHT off a doze in the recliner. The pot made it possible to eat without puking, but even five days after this treatment, he still couldn’t seem to do anything but catch a few sessions of Family Feud. Gideon was kicking Dane’s ass while they watched Jeopardy!
Final Jeopardy! was “The Seventeenth Century.”
A buzz against the coffee table had Gideon scooping up his phone and muti
ng the TV.
“What is a bad time to call because I want to hear this, Alex,” Dane said.
Gideon tossed him the remote. “Hi, Jax.” He shot a look at Dane, who kept the mute on through the commercial break.
“Hey.” Jax’s own greeting was loud enough to hear from the recliner.
“So, do you finally have a date for when your new show is available for binge-watching?” Gideon asked.
“Shit. Didn’t I tell you? January 15. But that’s not why I called.”
Dane kept his finger ready on the volume button but didn’t need Alex to read him the card.
This attempt to depose the last Roman Catholic King of England failed in 1685.
Dane loved Errol Flynn. He’d seen Captain Blood. Twice. “What is the Monmouth Rebellion?” he muttered as Gideon said, “The Rye House Plot.”
“What is?”
For an instant, Dane thought Jax was correcting Gideon’s failure to frame his answer as a question and snorted.
“Nothing, Jax.”
Jax got sidetracked with some story, and Dane hitched up the volume as the last notes of the Jeopardy! tune died away.
The first contestant didn’t look like an Errol Flynn fan. He had “What is the Gunpowder Plot?”
Gideon rolled his eyes as Dane did the same. “Wrong side, they were Catholics,” Dane muttered, and Gideon nodded agreement.
He covered the mic on his phone. “And off by sixty years.”
Dane was sure Gideon’s answer was off by three years, but that victory dance would have to wait.
The next contestant had jumped to the same wrong conclusion, leading Dane to mumble about people being confused about Guy Fawkes masks.
Gideon flashed him a V for Vendetta sign. They’d seen that movie together just before Dane met Spencer.
“So anyway,” Jax said.
“Hang on a sec.” Gideon covered the mic again.
Dane cranked the volume.
The current leader was far enough ahead that her victory wasn’t in question. Dane hoped for her monetary success she was an Errol Flynn fan.
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