Tim frowned and checked to see how much color had come back to Chris’s face. Not enough. “Just take the good stuff tonight, so you can sleep, and then switch in the morning.”
“Why do you even care?” Chris asked, clearly exasperated.
“Because I do?” Tim said lamely, because he was still trying to figure out what the hell was going with all these weird feelings he was mostly trying to ignore. Self-awareness: not his thing. “Also, you need to sleep so you can heal. So, whatever, shut up and take the drugs.”
Chris did, but not without a lot of disgruntled looks.
Tim waited until Chris was settled back again before switching off all but one dim light and turning the TV volume down. “I’m going to go clean up the kitchen. Shout if you need anything, okay?”
“Yeah. Sure,” Chris said, sounding defeated again.
Tim seriously hated that, but he didn’t know how to fix it. He squeezed Chris’s shoulder once before leaving him gazing vaguely at the TV. When he came back twenty minutes later, Chris was out cold, still sitting up in bed.
Tim shook Chris’s shoulder to rouse him only long enough to help him scoot down on the bed. As soon as his head hit the pillows, he was out again. He was still way too fucking pale for Tim’s comfort, but hopefully sleep would help.
Sighing, Tim stripped out of his t-shirt and climbed in the other side of the bed, switching off the light and curling up facing away from Chris.
He didn’t consider going back to his room. If he did, he just knew Chris would try to get up in the middle of the night without asking for help. This way, he’d be close enough to know when Chris was awake and could step in before he tried to do anything stupid.
Really, Tim was a great fucking friend for being there, and he intended to point that out when Chris squawked about it in the morning.
He snuggled down into the bed further, enjoying the fresh, soft sheets already warmed by Chris’s body just a foot away. His grandmother’s quilt was familiar beneath his fingertips, as comforting as the soft sound of Chris’s breathing behind him.
Chapter Three
CHRIS WOKE UP from a strange dream about being locked in a sauna to find himself pinned to the bed by Tim. Jesus Christ, the guy was a fucking blast furnace.
Maybe it was the drugs, or the exhaustion of the past few days, or his subconscious getting the best of him, but for five minutes, he just lay there and enjoyed the hell out of it. Tim was curled around Chris, his breath tickling the back of Chris’s neck, his arm tight around Chris’s ribs, a wide palm pressed over his heart.
Chris had a vague memory of waking up sometime in the middle of the night, his back aching from having been flat out on it for most of the day. He’d carefully rolled over, trying and failing to find a way to sleep comfortably on his side until Tim had tucked a pillow between his knees. Chris couldn’t remember where he’d thought Tim had materialized from at that moment, but now it made sense. In hindsight, he was grateful for the help, but even more grateful for the good drugs, since he wouldn’t have been able to sleep another wink if he’d been aware that Tim was in bed with him.
Instead, he’d passed out and apparently rolled partially onto his front, his good leg bent onto the mattress, and Tim’s stretched along behind it, resting on his cast and the pillow.
Chris shifted carefully and reached behind him until his hand encountered a bare hip. For one hysterical moment, he thought Tim might be naked—he totally wouldn’t put it past him, the fucking nudist—but then his fingers brushed against Tim’s boxer briefs.
Tim grunted in his sleep, his hips shifting closer to Chris’s ass, his hold tightening. Chris held his breath and tucked his hand back onto the bed in front of him.
He really didn’t want Tim to wake up. Not yet. Not when the wriggle of Tim’s hips had sent a shot of arousal straight to Chris’s morning wood.
What the fuck was he supposed to do now?
If it wasn’t for the fucking cast, he could have rolled right out of the bed and gone straight to the bathroom, maybe using some careful hand placement to conceal whatever was going on in his pajama pants that shouldn’t be. But the cast and crutches weren’t going to allow him to dash anywhere. And they sure as shit weren’t going to let him hide anything.
Chris attempted to very, very subtly shift his hips to ease the pressure against his dick.
Tim hummed, his lips pressing against Chris’s neck, and wriggled closer.
Chris closed his eyes and took a series of deep breaths. His erection needed to go away. Jerking off was definitely not an option, even if it would only take about a minute at this point. Instead, he thought about his next doctor’s appointment in a few days, then about his last family reunion and how awful his Aunt Debbie had been, pinching his cheeks and asking about a girlfriend. He even tried to picture Vancouver winning the Stanley Cup.
The last one almost worked.
Chris sighed and accepted he was going to have to lie there and wait it out. He hadn’t spent this much time worrying about a boner since he’d been in middle school, and he felt fucking ridiculous about it. Tim must have sensed something in his sleep, because his hand started rubbing Chris’s chest, his lips pressing more firmly to the back of his neck.
And that didn’t help at all.
Because there was nothing Chris wanted to do more than lean back against the pressure of those lips. To feel them moving across his skin. To feel that hockey-roughened palm glide down his belly and sneak beneath the waistband of his pajama pants.
Now Chris had no choice but to thrust his own hand into his pants—and not for any fun reason, either. His dick was bent in half in there, and if Tim was going to keep torturing him, Chris had to do something or risk injury.
Of course, that woke Tim up.
Chris half expected Tim to leap out of the bed when he realized they were spooned tightly together. Or at least move swiftly to the other side of the mattress. Instead, he yawned widely and rubbed the tip of his nose along Chris’s nape. Chris jerked his hand from his pants before the temptation became too great.
“You okay?” Tim asked, his voice rough with sleep and unfairly sexy. He propped himself up on his elbow and watched curiously as Chris pulled his arm from beneath himself.
“Sure,” Chris said quickly, his voice stupidly high and the dead opposite of sexy. “My arm. It…uh…fell asleep.”
“Oh, sorry,” Tim said, rolling away a little. Chris instantly felt cold, but was relieved that he might actually get out of this without embarrassing himself. Then Tim pulled at his shoulder. “Here, roll onto your back and get your weight off that arm.”
“No! I mean, that’s okay. It feels better now.”
“Come on, you need to move if you want to get feeling back,” Tim said, throwing the covers off so he could help Chris get his good leg up and over the cast and back onto the mattress.
Chris didn’t have much choice but to go along, trying to be casual about the whole thing as he landed with his shoulders to the mattress and glanced down at himself.
Yeah, it was pretty obvious what was going on down there. Tim had stopped moving, his hand still wrapped around Chris’s good knee, his eyes on the tent in Chris’s pants.
Which was just awesome. Finally, his boner found a reason to retreat.
Chris was trying to figure out if he should apologize or ignore it or what when Tim’s phone buzzed on the table on the far side of the bed. The second Tim turned away to grab it, Chris sat up and yanked the covers back up to his waist.
“Hello?”
Chris didn’t have to be a genius to know who was on the other end of the phone. Even if he hadn’t been able to hear the tinny screeching coming from the earpiece, he would have known by Tim’s cringe and his expression as he listened to Michelle chew him out. It was, sadly, a familiar look.
Tim was a really great guy. He was smart and funny and caring. But he had the worst taste in girlfriends. Not that they weren’t also nice and smart and funny. But somehow th
ey could be all those things and still be totally wrong for Tim. Finding these women was like Tim’s superpower or something.
Tim tried to get a word in edgewise, but clearly Michelle wasn’t having it. Smiling apologetically at Chris, Tim climbed from the bed and wandered toward the bathroom. Chris didn’t bother to look at anything but the flex of muscles across Tim’s broad, bare back. The full length of his long, strong thighs exposed where his underwear had ridden up while they’d been, apparently, cuddling most of the night.
Tim pulled the phone from his ear and hit a couple buttons on the screen. Suddenly Michelle’s voice was loud in the room.
“…the fuck you were thinking. I showed up at Smitty’s and your teammates, who all looked embarrassed, by the way, are the ones telling me that you’re not going to show!”
Chris cringed, but Tim just shrugged, sanguine as ever in the face of an infuriated woman. “It will take her a while to wind down,” Tim said, putting the phone down on the dresser. Chris looked at him in horror, gesturing at the phone. “Oh, no, I muted our side. I gotta pee.”
And with that, he left Chris listening to his girlfriend’s tirade while he slipped into the bathroom and took a freaking leak with the door open. Chris flopped down on the bed and ground the heels of his palms into his eye sockets, because he really didn’t need to see that. Too bad blinding himself didn’t keep him from listening to something he couldn’t possibly ignore but really shouldn’t be hearing.
Apparently, Tim never did romantic things. He didn’t use endearments, and all he wanted to do was hang out with his friends. Sometimes a woman wants more than a beer out with the guys…and so on. Chris had heard most of this before, at various points over the years, hollered at Tim by any number of women.
And he supposed he understood their position, truth be told. But at the same time, all Chris ever wanted to do was hang out with Tim and their friends and have a beer, so it was hard to be totally sympathetic.
He yanked his hands away from his face when Michelle said, “You know what? I don’t care that you fuck like a pile driver crossed with a fucking contortionist! It’s not worth it. You never put us first. Put me first. So what if you’ve got a big dick and talented tongue? I can’t believe I let you fuck me on the hood of my car, and that ice cube trick was hot, but…”
At this point, Tim was madly trying to finish up in the bathroom. Any other man on earth would have skipped washing his hands, but neat-freak Tim couldn’t, so Chris was treated to a litany of sexual escapades. He couldn’t help but laugh, turning to bury his face in the pillows. How was this even his life? He was a little horrified with himself when his dick got back in the game. But seriously, Tim could fuck for hours? Chris really hadn’t needed to know that.
Finally, Tim dove from the bathroom and scooped up his phone, taking it off speaker and almost dropping it in his haste.
“Michelle!” he said loudly, and the noise stopped. “What are you trying to say?”
Chris knew the answer to that question even without the phone on speaker. Apparently, Tim wasn’t surprised either, though he did jerk the phone away from his ear and stare down at it, his expression bewildered. “She hung up on me.”
Chris barely controlled the urge to roll his eyes.
“And she dumped me.”
“I’m sorry.”
Tim sighed, his shoulders bent. “No, you’re not.”
“What?” Chris said, sitting up again. “Of course I am.”
“You hated Michelle.”
“No, I didn’t! I thought she was nice.”
“You barely spoke to her.”
Was there a nice way to tell his friend he’d long ago stopped trying to be friends with his girlfriends, since they never lasted more than three months and most ended up hating him with a fire that burned hotter than a thousand suns?
Nope.
“I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t cause problems for you with her. I didn’t mean to be…distant, or whatever.”
Tim gave him a look. “I don’t get you.”
“What does that mean?” And when did this become a conversation about him?
“You’re always so…” Tim waved his hand vaguely, obviously searching for the right word. “…reserved!” It didn’t sound like a compliment.
“I am not.”
“You are. I asked you months ago what you thought of Michelle, and you said she was nice.”
“She was nice! I mean, she is nice, I guess. Just maybe not to you. Today.” Chris shut his mouth before he could dig that hole any deeper.
“You didn’t think she was nice.” When Chris opened his mouth to object, Tim held up a hand. “Okay, you did. But I could tell you were thinking a lot of other things about her, too, when I asked, and you didn’t say any of them.”
“It wasn’t my business.”
“You’re my best friend! And I asked. How is that not your business?”
“I’m not as good as you are at talking about what I’m feeling, okay? I like to keep some things to myself.”
“Why? Don’t you think I’ll understand? You can tell me anything.”
Chris scoffed at that, because seriously.
“Holy shit, you don’t trust me. That’s it, isn’t it?”
Chris looked at Tim, alarmed. “No! Of course that’s not it. I trust you more than anyone.”
“Right,” Tim said shortly, coming around the bed to scoop his clothes off the floor, clearly intending to leave the room.
Chris panicked. He didn’t want the conversation to end this way, and he was in no condition to chase after Tim. He rolled across the bed, dragging his bad leg behind him, and grabbed Tim’s arm.
Tim looked down at him with the blankest expression Chris had ever seen on his normally expressive, couldn’t-hide-a-thing face.
“I trust you,” Chris said, his voice almost cracking, his grip on Tim’s arm fierce.
“Then tell me what you’re thinking. Right now. Don’t be reserved or whatever. Just say it.”
Chris let go of Tim’s arm and sat back, using the excuse of rearranging his legs to give himself some time. He glanced up at Tim and his terrible, blank expression. Chris hated it.
“They don’t deserve you,” he said at last, shocking even himself.
“Who? Michelle?”
“Any of them. Any of the women you’ve dated and who have dumped you.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re always yourself with them, and they don’t appreciate that enough.”
Tim sat on the edge of the bed and dropped his clothes back into a heap on the floor. He didn’t look blank anymore. He looked bleak. “I try to be, but I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t be. I mean, look at my track record. I must be doing something wrong.”
Chris reached out, but caught himself at the last second and let his hand fall back to the bed. “You’re not doing anything wrong, Tim.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not what I’ve been told. All I want to do is hang out with the guys. My friends. You. That’s me being myself, and apparently that’s not okay.”
“But it is.”
“And I like talking about hockey, but that’s not interesting, I guess.”
“Sure it is.”
“God knows women never think the pranks are funny. And I’m not even the one pulling them!”
Chris chuckled. “Yeah, that’s true. Granted, sometimes your girlfriends have gotten caught in the crossfire on those.”
Tim sighed. “Tina refused to ever speak to me again after the hair-removal cream incident.”
“No, I imagine she was upset, what with having to get a wig and all.”
Tim’s lips twitched. “It was kind of funny, though.”
Chris grinned. “I thought so. I mean, not the Tina part, but who knew you had such a lumpy head, dude?”
Tim laughed, but the sound died off quickly, his smile sliding away. “I’m doomed, aren’t I?”
“You’re not doomed.”
“I’m ne
ver going to find someone who loves to hang out with the guys.”
“Yes, you will.”
“And who doesn’t care that they’re actually a bunch of idiots and pranksters.”
“Sure.”
“And won’t care that I travel half the year and work a ton of nights when I’m home. Who wants to talk about hockey as much as I do. Who’s happy going out for a beer and some steak and then coming home to chill out, because I’m too fucking tired in the middle of the season to go out and party. Who the hell is going to put up with that? Let’s face it—I’m fucked.”
“No, you—” Chris sighed and closed his mouth. What could he say? Tim could be a total pain in the ass, but he was perfect in all the ways that mattered to Chris.
“You have your reserved face on again,” Tim muttered darkly. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing.”
The blank expression was gone. And the bleak one. Tim was pissed. He stood suddenly. “You know what, I’m done. I’m pouring my heart out here, and you can’t even tell me the truth. Just say it! You think I’m fucked, too. Admit it.”
“That’s not what I was thinking at all.”
“Then what?” Tim shouted, furious.
Chris snapped. In all the years they’d known each other, this was what made Tim so angry he yelled at Chris for the very first time? Fuck that. If he wanted to know Chris’s innermost thoughts so badly, then he could deal with the fallout.
“That person does exist!” Chris shouted back. “There already is someone who loves to spend time with you, who loves hockey and your friends and their ridiculous pranks. Who gets that you have to travel and that you’re tired!”
Tim blinked, appearing utterly bewildered. “Who?”
“Me, you asshole! Me.”
Tim threw his hands in the air. “What about you?”
“I appreciate you exactly as you are. I love our life. Our friends. You. Even the super fucking irritating things, because apparently there is something wrong with me. I love that you can’t hide what you’re feeling almost ever. And that you say what you’re thinking, even when I can’t do the same. I like living with you, a fucking neat-freak nudist, and working with you, and there’s never been a time, not once, that I was tired of being around you. You’re gorgeous and you’re kind and you’re the best person I know. So shut up about there not being someone who can appreciate everything about you. There already is. And unfortunately for you, it’s me.”
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