[Men of Hidden Creek 06.0] Adore

by E. Davies

  No longer was Cas worrying about whether they could make the practical details work. It was like he had no other options. They just would, one way or another.

  Somehow or another, with enough grit and determination, it would work.

  25

  Matt, two weeks later

  Cas could work as a gym greeter, if only Matt could pay him enough.

  He’d kept Matt company for the afternoon, since he was apparently taking a day off to let his hands recover from cutting corks. It did make the hours pass quicker, and Rory teased them constantly about the eyes they made at each other.

  Over the last half-hour, Cas had cheerily greeted everyone walking in—and he actually knew a lot of them. He’d also explained the LGBT safe space hour that was coming up.

  They didn’t want to exclude other people from coming during these hours, but they wanted to provide a space that was focused on certain groups’ needs. That was the compromise Matt had reached that he felt most comfortable with.

  In talking with JJ’s, they’d been inspired to start their own sensory-friendly hours with no music or announcements, nobody stocking shelves, and less fluorescent lighting. The town was starting to change in little ways.

  Everyone had been good-natured and friendly about it so far when he’d told them about this upcoming hour. Matt wasn’t fearful that nobody would show up, or that they’d come to class and hate it, or complain that they were being excluded.

  Five people so far—not a bad turnout for his first class. Most of them were friends—Gabriel, Andre, Cas. He was running this class as a six-week-long drop-in, so people could try it and get over their initial fears. Once they decided that they liked it, he’d develop a more formal curriculum to let people progress.

  Still, a sixth person would be welcome, and Matt turned to the door as it opened.

  Goddamn it. Why did it have to be Chad?

  “Hey!” Cas greeted with a forced smile, and Matt touched his arm.

  “Better head to the changing room,” he told his boyfriend. He’d hang out here and direct stragglers to the class.

  Like Chad, who was eyeing Cas in a way that set Matt’s teeth on edge. Not that he was jealous, but he didn’t want Chad even looking at his gorgeous boyfriend.

  “Hey yourself,” Chad greeted, looking between them before Cas nodded and headed to the changing room.

  “Hi! Are you here for the first class?” Matt pointed to the poster hanging from the front desk as he waited by the door.

  Chad gave him a big thumbs-up. “Easy competition, bro.”

  Of all the out gay men here, he’d least expected Chad to turn up… but then, he was always desperate for a chance to date someone who didn’t know that he was a great big dick.

  Plus, Chad already had a membership, so the class was free for him and he didn’t even have to buy a day pass.

  Matt raised his eyebrows. “Easy what?”

  “You know,” Chad chuckled and winked meaningfully. He strolled on past him to the changing room. “When do we start?”

  “Two minutes,” Matt answered. He wanted to get them warming up early, since several of them had expressed concern that they were out of shape and might not be able to do it.

  Chad smirked and swaggered off with a parting, “I’ll be there.”

  Chad was clearly expecting to lift weights and show off his muscles. Luckily, Matt was planning to teach them stretching, bodyweight exercises, and core strength—things that lifters often did poorly.

  Matt gathered everyone who’d shown up and led them all to the corner of the gym that he’d cleared out. In a perfect world, he could build a separate studio, but this way it was a lot easier to keep an eye on the rest of the place.

  “You’ll do great,” Cas whispered when he caught up with Matt. He tugged up his pants, and then gave him a bright smile and joined the rest of the group to introduce himself.

  He always made the atmosphere a little brighter, wherever he went. Matt admired that about him.

  “I’m Matt and I’m your teacher. I’m going to try to learn everyone’s names real quick, so feel free to give me pop quizzes later,” Matt joked to relax the atmosphere.

  Once the introductions were over, he told everyone to grab a mat, rolling his eyes as Chad finally bothered showing up to the group. He’d been a minute after Cas to the changing room, but he couldn’t bother making it out here on time?

  “Welcome,” he added to call attention to his lateness. “Glad you could make it. Can you introduce yourself?”

  “I’m Chad. I work out here a lot. What are we doing?” Chad said, frowning as he grabbed a mat and looked over toward the weights.

  “Glad you asked. So, before we can build strength, I want to take you through some simple exercises you can do yourself, at home.”

  “Then why are we even here?” Chad muttered under his breath, not very subtly. A few people—especially Cas—glared.

  “If you learn the correct form, you can avoid injuring yourself,” Matt told him calmly. “And I’m going to push you harder than you’d push.”

  Andre, another young guy, stared at him nervously. The expression was mirrored on the other five guys’ faces.

  “I won’t be a drill sergeant,” Matt added with a laugh as he positioned his mat in front of theirs. “But I do want to show you everything you’re capable of doing.”

  The door rattled and three more women arrived.

  At first, Matt brightened up. He didn’t want the gay classes to be entirely gay or bi men. But then he paused, recognizing one of them.

  Goddamn it, she was the woman who had accosted Cas outside and told him that Matt was encouraging sin, or whatever the fuck her argument was.

  Rory started to stand up, but Matt waved a hand. If anyone was throwing them out, it was going to be him.

  “We’re here for the new class,” she said. “And you can’t prove we don’t belong here.”

  There was a long, awkward silence behind Matt, and then Cas stepped forward. “We were just about to get started! Join on in. It’s nice to see other queer folks. Are you from Hidden Creek?”

  Fuck, Matt was stressed all of a sudden. It was hard to focus on the class he’d planned.

  Cas caught his arm on the way by and murmured, “Worry about Chad. Let me worry about these folks.”

  As the three women joined the group, casting smarmy smiles around at everyone else, the door rattled again.

  “Are we late?” Cora burst in with surprising speed, already wearing bright pink yoga leggings and an electric blue top that made Matt’s eyes hurt.

  She was accompanied by four other ladies—Doris and three other women he recognized as part of the Hidden Creek church ladies’ group that somehow managed to take care of anyone in the community in need of help.

  And here they were. He stammered for a moment and then gestured to the mat. “Come on in. We were just getting started.”

  What else could he do?

  The first ten minutes of class were way more eventful than Matt had anticipated.

  One exercise at a time, he took them through warmups, politely ignoring Chad bragging about how many push-ups he did that morning. He took them through the basic exercises—sit-ups, push-ups, and the like.

  “I do one-armed push-ups most mornings,” Chad chatted while he did them. He even did clapping push-ups just to show that he could.

  Cas seemed to be pretending Chad didn’t exist, but not everyone in the class was so confident. One guy was already eyeing the changing room as if they wanted to sneak out early.

  None of the women present were doing so, though. They seemed to be in a staring competition, nobody backing down.

  “Moving on,” Matt announced, his chest knotting with worry and frustration. If Chad would just shut up and not take every chance to show off, it would be much more bearable.

  They stretched it out and Cas ran his hand down Matt’s arm. In an undertone, he murmured, “We’ve got this.”

  Just lik
e that, Matt’s stress climbed down a few notches. Cas was right. No point in letting a few assholes with their own agendas wind him up.

  “It’s so much better here than around a bunch of straight guys,” Chad was chatting.

  “Okay, y’all!” Matt called sharply, before Chad could explain that he thought gay guys and old ladies were easier to compete against. He wasn’t sure his insurance covered one of them braining him with a dumbbell. “Planks. Stretch out, arms above your head…”

  He got them to hold it for as long as possible, and it gave him a not small amount of joy to see Chad start to struggle earlier than others.

  Training certain exercises doesn’t make you a god, he thought.

  The others noticed, too, when Chad couldn’t hold his pose longer than a minute before silently dropping to the mat and rolling over. It seemed to boost their confidence.

  Matt felt like he had some control again, and he relished it. “Leg time. Lie down, face up, feet flat against the wall.”

  The exercise seemed simple, but it separated those with quiet strength from those who just wanted to look strong… and, like in life, they were rarely the same people.

  “A hundred toe taps,” Matt told them. “As fast as you can. You can rest when you’re done. If you get too tired, you stop, count down from ten, and keep going… as many times as it takes to get to a hundred.”

  “I’ll get a drink of water when I’m done,” Chad bragged.

  Matt walked back and forth, keeping his tongue firmly bitten. “And… go.”

  Just as he’d expected, Cas took it slow and steady. All that time on his feet, the strength in his arms he’d built up carrying and lifting materials, would serve him well today.

  All the protestors—as Matt was lumping them together in his head—were tapping their toes in an identical rhythm, and they looked equally pissed about it, like cranky middle-aged PTA mom clones.

  They all reached twenty at about the same time. By forty, Chad was actually frowning to himself.

  Cas was at seventy when Chad reached sixty and had to tap out for a breathing break. It took all the professionalism Matt had not to tease him and ask what the matter was.

  “Done!” Cas breathlessly announced, wiggling up and hitching up his pants again. Within a minute, so was Andre.

  Doris was the slowest because she kept stopping to complain, but Chad was only a minute faster than her. He looked beyond pissed off. “God, my legs,” he groaned. “That’s torture!”

  “This is an exercise you can do at home or when you’re out and about,” Matt told them all. He climbed onto a block to show them how to practice it on curbs or the bottom stair.

  There were muffled giggles when Chad groaned, “Are we done yet?”

  “In my day, any boy asking that would get sent back out for another round of chores,” Cora said.

  Matt half-expected one of the protestors to agree, but they seemed icily indifferent to any discussion going on around them—like they were preparing for a much bigger battle later and Chad was just the front line of the charge.

  Any world where Chad and a bunch of hypocritical assholes from Florida were on the same side—causing disruption and chaos in the name of bigotry—was a strange one.

  “I did tell you to be prepared to work hard,” Matt reminded him with a smile. “Using your own bodyweight and simple physics to build strength can be humbling.”

  “Fuck humble,” Chad spat. “I don’t need to be humble. I’m stronger than any of you…” He cast a sideways look at Matt and stopped just short of the insult he clearly wanted to use.

  As far as Matt was concerned, that attitude could fuck off where it belonged. “I recommend you refresh yourself on the rules again before you come back,” he told him. He cast half a glance at the protestors to see if they were listening, but they seemed to be deliberately ignoring that hint, too.

  “Whatever,” Chad mumbled and sloped off to the changing rooms.

  “Right,” Cora said with a cheerful smile. “What are we learning next?”

  Matt covered his mouth and turned his laugh into a cough. She seemed pleased as punch that Chad had stormed out. There had to be a backstory there.

  Maybe this class was going to turn out okay after all.

  26

  Caspian

  One enemy vanquished, one to go. As far as Cas was concerned, they’d almost saved the day. The big concern was what might happen in the changing rooms later and what the protestors had planned.

  They’d kept to themselves over the first few minutes of class, but they hadn’t started shit, strangely enough. They just looked confused as soon as Chad stormed off. To be fair, so did some of the guys.

  “My apologies for that… er, interaction,” Matt fumbled for words as they all turned back to him. “I’ll make sure he understands the rules around respect before he joins another class.”

  Cas shrugged and looked around. “No harm done.”

  Nobody looked that angry—in fact, Doris was cackling. “Ten minutes of exercise and he’s crying like a baby.” She clicked her tongue.

  One of the other ladies, Bettina, waved a hand. “Let’s get back to work. We won’t build man-crushing thighs by sitting around and chatting.”

  A laugh rippled through the group and Matt straightened up. He looked more confident as he walked them through some more basic exercises, and to Cas’s surprise, the whole group kept up with him. Hell, Cora couldn’t hold side-plank for long because she kept laughing, but they all tried their best.

  The three women who had clearly come in from out of town were the least chatty, so Cas made the most effort to socialize with them as they started to cool down.

  “Are you visiting? I don’t recognize you from Hidden Creek,” he said cheerily as they touched their toes.

  Out of breath, one of them managed, “Houston hotel.” They traded annoyed glances.

  “Well, I hope Hidden Creek has been good to you!” Cas smiled.

  Cora took over before he could say anything more. “And what brings you fine-looking young things to our humble town?” That was unmistakably flirtatious.

  The seeming ringleader, who had introduced herself as just Ann, opened and closed her mouth a few times before she huffed. “I’m married, you know.”

  “Many of us married someone to keep the gossips quiet, honey,” Cora assured her. “Especially us ladies. The gay men can fool around as bachelors, but things were different for us.”

  Doris nodded solemnly. “It’s never too late to find the woman of your dreams,” she assured them. She was the picture of an earnest welcoming committee. “In fact, if you’re sticking around, I can see what I can do. Everyone comes into Grind. I know who’s looking.”

  “We’re not—we’re not that sort of woman,” Ann huffed, looking more offended with every word Doris said.

  “Matt’s bi, too!” Cas helpfully added, folding his arms as he watched the most polite and validating fight he’d ever witnessed. He hitched up his yoga pants, which didn’t want to stay up over his underwear.

  “My son’s bi,” said Bettina. “So I’m here to support safe spaces for him.”

  “We’re not… bisexuals are—they don’t—” Ann spluttered.

  “They don’t have to keep their nails as short?” Cora grinned. Gabriel choked with laughter and Andre looked like he was trying to bite his tongue.

  “Oh, our new friends aren’t lesbians!” Doris announced, and the other women pretended to look serious as they nodded. “My mistake for assuming you’re here for mutual support and a place to feel safe being who you are. I wouldn’t dream of assuming you were trying to make people feel unsafe. It certainly wouldn’t be what Jesus would do.”

  “Well, what are you doing here if you’re not gay?” Ann exclaimed as one of the other women nodded. “You have no right to say I don’t belong here if I’m straight.”

  Before Matt could say anything. Cas put his hand on his arm. He had a feeling their friends were going to hand
le the situation for them.

  “Oh, we’re here to support a safe space for the gays around here, too,” Doris assured her. “They need lots of allies, so it’s nice to see other folks showing up.”

  “No, we’re here because they shouldn’t have something we don’t,” Ann snapped.

  Cora nodded thoughtfully. “That’s certainly never happened to the gays—not having something we did.” Ann’s glare would have melted steel, but Cora was sugary-sweet as ever, and just kept going. “So if you’d like to get changed around a lot of straight people instead, I hear there’s lots of other times this place is open during the week.”

  “Do you know why they introduced these classes?” Cas spoke up with an innocent smile. “Would you believe some people only wanted to get changed or shower in the vicinity of people just like them? Hey, presto: we can all do that now.”

  Gabriel nodded, his eyes bright with amusement.

  From the backpacks piled against the wall—the protestors and a few others hadn’t gone to the changing room to drop off their stuff—a phone started to ping.

  No, at least two phones. There were at least two distinct alert chimes, like someone was texting both of them at once. Maybe three… which was interesting, because all three visitors were blushing now.

  They chimed a good seven or eight times before Cas lost count, but the owners seemed determined not to claim the phones.

  Rory came wandering over, her phone in her hand. “Sorry to interrupt, but I just had an idea. Everyone who’s been one-starring us or leaving shitty reviews… it’s only a dozen accounts, most of which look fake. I sent private messages to almost all of them.”

  She tapped her screen a few more times, and as Cas approached the bags by the wall, it became clear that there were two phones. Each pinged again.

  “Those are the eleventh and twelfth accounts. It’s been awfully noisy over here. Were there about ten other notifications over the last minute?”