by G. D. Cox
Cole hears the man suck in a ragged breath.
"Yeah, I was scared. I'm not ashamed to admit that. I was scared that it was gonna ... change me, that we were both wrong and it was somehow gonna take something from me anyway and make me less than I was. But then ..." The man's voice goes husky. Cole feels the man's lips move against the back of his fingers. "It was you giving me something so good, so genuine. You made me become someone more, someone better. And you know, after we came, when I was still flying high and you were still deep inside me? That was when I knew how much you loved me, Phelan. You didn't laugh at all when I goddamn cried like a pathetic baby. You just hugged me and told me that I was never some defective thing that needed to be fixed. That I was okay all along, just right the way I was, and I just needed to believe that."
Cole opens his eyes to find the man still gazing at him, gripping his hand to that exquisite face and blinking glistening eyes. That's what Clyde does when Clyde doesn't want him (or anyone else) to know how affected he is, when Clyde opens up about his innermost thoughts and emotions. That's what Clyde had done that night, just before he pushed inside Clyde for the first time, after driving Clyde half-mad with pleasure from massaging that luscious spot inside Clyde with his fingers.
Stop torturing me and fuck me already!
He'd replied, no, and it'd visibly surprised Clyde who gaped up at him and asked him why.
I'm not going to fuck you. I'm going to make -
Clyde, lightning quick as he was, knew what he'd been about to say despite him biting off his maudlin declaration. He'd stared down at Clyde who stared back up at him with such big, astounded eyes, as if Clyde couldn't believe that they were really here, that they were really fortunate enough to find something so immense and real that made all the sense in the universe in each other.
Clyde had blinked glistening eyes. Smiled up at him with them.
Then Clyde rasped, stop torturing me, babe, and make love to me already.
And he did, and he rejoiced in the pleasure in Clyde's fervent moans with each thrust, in the way Clyde's back arched off the bed so splendidly, the way Clyde's fingers grappled at his shoulders and back, the way Clyde kissed him again and again and groaned into his mouth and refused to let them part as if Clyde needed for them to be joined from head to toe. He'd made Clyde come without his cock being touched at all while he came inside Clyde, groaning at the staggering sensations of Clyde clenching like a hot, silken vise around him.
Then, while he was still shuddering from his own pleasure, still deep inside Clyde and propping himself up over Clyde with his elbows on the bed, Clyde's face had crumpled (just like this man's had earlier, just like it). Clyde had covered his face with both hands and refused to move them away even when Cole shushed Clyde and petted his hair and embraced him. It had taken Clyde a few minutes to unwind enough to nestle a damp, contorted face into the side of his neck, to wrap those strong, muscular arms around him too.
He'd felt like he had found home, then, in Clyde's arms. In Clyde.
He'd felt like he could face the whole universe and its adversities, then, knowing he wasn't alone anymore. Knowing that there was someone else who wasn't alone anymore, someone he loved with everything he had. Someone who loved him back with everything he had.
Someone he still loves with everything he has. Someone ... who loves him back with everything he has.
Clyde.
Clyde, sweetheart.
It's you.
There's a sudden click deep in Cole's mind, like the final and most essential piece of a puzzle slotting into its rightful place.
And just like that, the mist is gone from his mind, and he knows who this familiar, sweet, remarkable man is. This beloved man who sits at his bedside and holds his hand so tenderly and speaks to him with that rich, enamored, respectful voice.
"Clyde?" he whispers, tightening his fingers around the other man's.
Clyde - Clyde! - sits straighter in the armchair. Those big, beautiful blue eyes widen. That handsome (so handsome) face goes slack with realization.
"Phelan? Phelan ... you know who I am?"
"Clyde," Cole whispers again, and he doesn't give a damn that he sounds like his voice has gone through a grater, like he's torn up and this close to letting the fragile dam in him shatter again. "Clyde. My majestic cat. My shield."
He watches Clyde's lips (such supple, wonderful lips) quiver gradually into a soft, closed-lipped smile. The smile looks as if it'll fracture at any time, so delicate with hope as it is. He sighs as Clyde presses that tremulous smile into the skin of the back of his hand, then again.
"You back with me now, huh, you mushbag?" Clyde murmurs, gazing at him once more with those crinkled, gratified eyes that he has missed so. "Well, I'm not done yet because, see, I'm getting to the best one."
Cole's eyes flit down from Clyde's face to Clyde's hands grasping his. He stares at Clyde's left hand. At the two bands of luxurious platinum around its fourth finger. Clyde is ... wearing his wedding ring on his finger. Wearing both their rings.
"When you proposed to me, we were sitting at our favorite spot on the rooftop ledge of our apartment building. The sky was completely cloudless that night. We were looking up at the stars and I pointed out Sagittarius for ya, drawing out the bow and arrow. I commented about how pretty the arrangement was or something - see, I told you your mushiness rubs off on me - and the corndog that you are, you were staring at me instead and you said, 'Yes, you are.'"
Clyde's eye roll this time is exaggerated, but the smile that follows it is no less sweeter.
"Suddenly you said you had 'something to show me' and you reached down to your jeans and my god, Phelan, for a second I thought you were gonna pull your cock out and ask for a blowjob." Clyde dips his head and snorts in amusement, missing the amused quirk of Cole's lips. "But no ... no, you were reaching into your side pocket and suddenly you had this burgundy velvet box on your palm and I asked you what the hell it was. And you said -"
"'You're a sharp shooter. Guess,'" Cole rasps, and Clyde gives him another broad smile, displaying a row of pearly, straight teeth.
"Yeah. And I said, 'Is that the key to my new Porsche?' And you just looked at me with narrowed eyes and raised eyebrows - and by the way, I do know that's your way of rolling your eyes - and then you said -"
"'You'd rather have a Porsche than an armed jet plane?'"
Clyde lets out another snort at that, eyes crinkling even more and Cole blinks and oh, he thinks, how much he's missed this man. How he's missed that smile and that mischievous tone and that graze of beard stubble against his skin and those lips uttering such earnest words.
"Yeah, and then I laughed but then I stopped when you opened the box and showed me the rings in it." Still grasping his hand, Clyde touches the rings with the fingertips of his right hand. "I could tell you took your time to choose them. I could tell they were expensive as hell and I was gonna ask you what you were thinking buying them at all. Then it really hit me what you were gonna do with them. And then ..." Clyde lowers Cole's hand onto the bed, still clasping it with both of his. Clyde's throat works in a long swallow. "I couldn't breathe. I couldn't speak and you were suddenly babbling about how they weren't totally ready yet and maybe it was too soon to ask and you were thinking about getting something engraved on them first."
Clyde lowers his eyes to their rings as he removes one of them from his finger. Cole knows it's his. His wedding ring that he'd removed along with its necklace from his neck months ago, that he'd placed in its burgundy velvet box on the dressing table in their bedroom, unable to put it away in the drawer because Clyde walked away but never said goodbye.
"You asked me if I already had something in mind, and I said, 'Something Latin. Something to remember the other by.' Right then and there, I knew what I wanted my ring to say. What I wanted you to know for life. For all our lives."
Just like Clyde did in Nate's office that halcyon day over two years ago, Clyde is grasping his left hand and raisin
g it and sliding his ring onto its fourth finger.
"Nunc scio quit sit amor," Clyde rasps, squeezing his hand so tight. "Now I know what love is, and it really is all because of you, babe. And I'm never letting you go."
And well, there goes that fragile dam in Cole, and all those oceans are surging up to his eyes again and flooding them with something so scorching and wet and cleansing. He tries to say something, anything, but he can't. His throat's constricted to a choking pinhole but it's for the best reasons, the very best. He can't see anything anymore, just big blobs of color that sting his eyes.
He knows he's been silent for too long when Clyde whispers in a broken voice, "Don't let me go, Phelan. Please."
He lifts his left hand, trembling like it is, to Clyde's face and touches Clyde's bristly cheek. He feels something scorching and wet upon it too, and he lifts his hand higher to touch Clyde's high forehead and kiss it with his fingertips.
Everything's going to be okay, sweetheart. We've got each other again and we're going to be okay.
He thinks he manages to say this aloud at last, at last. What emerges instead from his contorted mouth is a wracking sob, then another, and then Clyde is leaning over him and encompassing his shaking shoulders with those magnificent arms, cradling his head so gently against a warm, soothing neck. Clyde kisses him on the temple, letting the sunlight into him once more even as the final storm has him in its throes.
"I'm sorry, Phelan. I'm so sorry I left," Clyde rasps wetly into his ear. "I'm so sorry I hurt you. I'm so sorry."
It takes an immeasurable time for Cole to be able to open clear eyes again, to be able to breathe again and not be devastated by sobs (and thank Medical for the fantastic painkillers surfeiting his body right now). He presses his nose into the juncture between Clyde's neck and shoulder, regardless of his nasal cannula. He inhales as deeply as his ribs allow him, consoled by Clyde's spicy, darkly sweet scent like flowery smoke mingled with honey, by Clyde's living heat and steady pulse.
Oh, how he had missed this man. How he'd missed his best friend, his lover and his husband so.
"We've got each other again," he whispers when he can, sounding even more gravelly, "we're going to be okay, sweetheart," and he feels Clyde's arms tighten around his shoulders. He feels more wetness along his temple and his ear where Clyde's cheek is pressed. He raises his left arm and wraps it around Clyde's tremoring torso as best he can, and he waits for the storm in Clyde to abate too, for the sunlight to let itself into Clyde again too.
When it does, Clyde is in bed with him, tucked between him and the now raised guardrail. He'd ignored Clyde's (half-hearted) protests about possibly aggravating his healing injuries by getting into the bed with him. He tugged on Clyde's wrist until Clyde gave in and then shifted as much as he could to one side on his own before Clyde stopped him and told him off (in a most fond way) for it. He, in turn, had told Clyde off (in a most fond way) for the contusions now apparent to him on Clyde's knuckles, for hurting his hands so.
"Your scent's faded from our bed," he murmurs to Clyde while he studies Clyde's face so near to his once more. Clyde's eyes are puffy and red, and there are dark circles of exhaustion around them. Clyde is in much need of a haircut (although he's fond of Clyde's hair however Clyde styles it, really) and in even more need of a shave. Clyde's lips are still chapped, hinting at a neglect to hydrate himself. He's quite sure that Clyde has probably neglected to also eat proper meals the entire time he'd been in a coma. Probably for the entirety of Clyde's absence, wherever it was Clyde had gone after leaving their (their) apartment that night.
And yet, he has never seen a more resplendent and welcomed vision.
"I'll make sure to roll around in everything," Clyde says, eyes puffy and red and twinkling. "Like a bulldog. Woof."
A mysterious, melodious sound flows from Cole's mouth at Clyde's deadpan reply. It takes him a moment to recognize it, then another moment to appreciate it. When a similar sound flows from Clyde's mouth too, he makes the sound again and then there they are, laughing quietly and elatedly together while looking like they've gone ten rounds as a tag team against a hundred GATF agents on the gym floor and lost.
Home, he thinks as he gazes at Clyde's face. I am home again.
He hums when Clyde gingerly encloses an arm around him above the blankets. He feels his wedding ring, warm and fortifying, around his finger (where it belongs, where it's always belonged). He feels no pain whatsoever. Only contentment. Only peace. He hears his heart beating again.
"Hello," he murmurs, his lips quirking up. "I'm Phelan."
Without batting an eyelid, with eyes still twinkling, Clyde murmurs back, "Hi. I'm Clyde."
And just like that, they're just Phelan and Clyde. Just two guys who somehow managed to meet and find each other again in this vast, unfair, unpredictable, senseless world, living the very first seconds of the rest of their new life together.
XL.
WHEN CLYDE BEGINS TO croon into Cole's ear about farewells and love in spring, about larks singing when he's near, he smiles, his dark-ringed eyes shut and crinkled. He thinks, there really is no finer lark than you, sweetheart and there won't be any goodbyes between us, not anymore.
And it's true, it's true.
XLI.
ELEVEN YEARS AFTER meeting Fabry for the first time in an interrogation room at GATF's headquarters, Clyde is invited along with Phelan to Fabry's undisclosed, heavily guarded home for Christmas. It's far from the first time that Phelan's visited said home, but Pa and Ma are going off on a ten-day-long holiday with friends instead of having Christmas in Chicago, which is why he and Phelan are free to accept Fabry's invitation.
(The only reason Pa and Ma are going anyway is due to Phelan insisting on it. They'd confirmed the plans with their friends long before Phelan was abducted in Croenia, and Pa and Ma had already stayed in NYC for three weeks after Phelan was discharged from the ICU and allowed to continue his recuperation at home.)
Fabry's home is an appealing, inviting house with a stone-and-shingle exterior, a two-car garage, a wraparound porch and open, free-flowing, brass-and-wood interiors, surrounded by açaí palm trees. For the first time, Clyde meets Victoria, Fabry's wife of twelve years, and their young daughters, Melina and Siobhan, nine and three years old respectively. Right off the bat, Clyde can tell that Victoria is one badass lady, what with her wholly shaved head and burly arms and light brown eyes as piercing as her husband's. Melina looks more like Fabry with her heavy-lidded, darker brown eyes and prominent nose, with braided, black hair tied into a high ponytail. Siobhan looks more like her mother, a little, chubby angel with a riot of curls and a huge smile.
It doesn't take much for Clyde to compartmentalize whatever information his brain's gathered about the house and its location into a locked box in the recesses of his mind. In the vast living room where a fabulous Christmas tree decorated to the nines stands in a corner, Victoria's warm, wide smile and tight hug does wonders for that after the five-hour flight out of NYC and the ride from the small, GATF-controlled airport in an SUV with blacked-out windows and privacy divider. (Fabry is dead serious about keeping the location a secret, even from him although he's Phelan's husband. He's got no hard feelings about that. Certainly not after the Croenian gizmo-induced mind-fuck.) Melina shyly smiles and waves at him and Phelan from behind her mother. Siobhan is the utter opposite of shy but just as sweet, letting out a high-pitched squeal of joy as she dashes to Phelan.
"Uncle Boots! Uncle Boots!"
It's the goddamn cutest thing ever to see Phelan grin at the little girl in dungarees and a fluffy, orange tutu and then sweep her up into his arms for a hug. It's also the goddamn best thing ever to see Phelan able to do that without any exertion or pain, to know that Phelan really has recovered from his injuries, still as tough as old boots.
"Hello, Siobhan. It's so nice to see you again," Phelan says with that sublime, resonant voice and oh jeez, it still does funny things to Clyde's insides after all these years, whether he hea
rs it through his earpiece or in person. Funny and good things, especially to that silly, happy thing in the left side of his chest.
"Uncle Boots, who is that?" Siobhan asks, gazing at Clyde with wide, smitten, brown eyes while being cuddled to Phelan's broad chest.
"Oh, that's my husband, Uncle Clyde," Phelan replies casually, quirking up those dark pink lips and looking at Clyde with those eyes like a crush of diamonds and oh jeez, it won't be Christmas for six hours yet and he's already this sappy. He as in Phelan, of course, not him. Somebody's gotta be the stoic, no-touchy-feely, manly man between the two of them -
"Hi, Uncle Clyde," Siobhan says as Phelan dumps her into his arms. She hugs his neck with both arms, trusting him to carry her without dropping her. "I love you!"
Did he think he's going to survive this trip to Fabry's home? He's going to die before tonight is over, at this rate.
"Hi, honey," he says (and no, his voice isn't husky in the least, shut up), hugging her tightly and patting her on her small, fragile back. "It's great to meet you too."
That's when Fabry, who's been standing behind him and Phelan all this time like an ominous, dark angel completely in black (because it seems the guy doesn't know other colors exist), speaks up and reminds him that he's carrying the youngest child of the scariest muthafucker on the planet.
"Did you know, Siobhan, that Uncle Clyde used to be in the circus?"
Siobhan rears back in his arms and gapes at him.
"Is that true?!" she squeals, and oh jeez, oh man, she's so freaking adorable with her huge eyes and huge smile and chubby cheeks and he's nodding and stammering like an idiot, "Uh, uh, yeah! I was - I was in the circus and I was, uhm, the cool guy who threw kni-" He swivels around to glance at Fabry's face with wide (terrified) eyes. When he sees a deadpan expression to rival even Phelan's, he glances at Siobhan again and says, "Uh, threw things at targets, yes, nice, not-at-all-sharp, fuzzy things and, uhm, played with clowns! Yeah, I can jump around and walk on my hands and -"