Irons and Works: The Complete Series

by E M Lindsey

  “Just religious,” Wyatt told him. “Tradition was important, but hot poutine is better than prayer.”

  Mat snorted a laugh, which was unfortunate timing as he’d just taken a bite, and he choked a bit, holding his hand to keep the boiling hot potato and cheese in place. “Oh god, is poutine meant to almost kill you?”

  “That bad?” Wyatt asked with a half grin, but it almost looked pained.

  “No,” Mat said in a rush, his tongue still burning. “Just hot food and I don’t get along.” He forced himself to chew and to pay attention, and after a second, the flavor hit him. Something about the combination of all three worked together in a marriage better than most things he’d ever tried. It was right up there with whenever Sage’s gym buddy Niko brought in home-cooked Greek food. There was nothing really like it. “Wow. This is…wow.”

  Wyatt’s grin went a little softer and more relaxed. “Yes?”

  “Yes,” Mat said sternly, then took a few more bites. “Oh, by the way um…” He cleared his throat and rubbed at the back of his neck, mortified he was about to butcher French in front of a native speaker. “Tu…uh. Tu bois trop de soda.”

  Wyatt froze completely, his fork halfway to his mouth, a look of utter and complete confusion on his face. “I…do what?”

  “Tu bois trop de soda,” Mat repeated again, his face burning hot. “God, tell me I’m not like, saying some euphemism for sucking dick or something.”

  After a beat, Wyatt dropped his fork and laughed, his hand covering his face. “No, but…do you know what you’re telling me?”

  “No,” Mat said, just a little sullen. “I had to download Duolingo and I just went with whatever the bored narrator was saying. I think it had the answer, but I couldn’t read it, and I was too fucking embarrassed to ask anyone else to read it for me.”

  At that, Wyatt sobered a little. He dropped his hand from his face, but he was still smiling a little. “Well, it means you think I drink too much soda.”

  Mat’s eyes went wide. “Oh god. Okay uh…well. I mean, I guess it could have been worse?”

  “It could have been much worse. But why…” he started.

  Mat shrugged, looking down at his hands. “You said if I learned a French phrase, you’d tell me what you were saying the other night.”

  At that, Wyatt actually did look mortified. He pushed back just a little, and rubbed at his right eye with his knuckle. “Ah. Right. I…forgot about that. I’m so sorry.”

  Mat frowned. “It’s totally fine. Really, I thought it was…I mean, we were having fun, right? Did I just make some huge faux pas or…”

  “No,” Wyatt said in a hurry. His hands returned to the table, feeling out for his fork, and he pushed it into his fries but didn’t take a bite. “I just…it was a little suggestive, and I didn’t realize you were… that you had a partner. A female partner. But I met your friend Amit at the store today, and he told me. I just feel guilty for not realizing you were straight.”

  Mat’s mouth dropped to argue, but Wyatt went on before he could say anything. “I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable. I didn’t mean it anyway. I was just trying to be funny.”

  Mat’s stomach hit the floor. Wyatt sounded so sincere and so embarrassed, and Mat felt like such a fucking idiot for assuming the guy really wanted to explore something with him. He swallowed, then quickly sucked it up because he really did like the guy, and crushes were easy to get over. “Dude, I don’t mind. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve kissed the guys to get them out of awkward situations with bad dates. I’m not insecure in my own sexuality.” Except that was starting to feel like a lie, though not for the reasons Wyatt assumed.

  Wyatt’s face softened. “Oh. Well…okay.” He pushed closer to the table a bit more and rested his hands on either side of his plate. “Do you still want to know?”

  Mat nodded, then remembered Wyatt couldn’t see him. “Hell yes.”

  Wyatt laughed, shaking his head, and did look a tiny bit embarrassed. “I told you that on a scale of one to ten, you’re poutine.”

  Mat blinked, then laughed hard enough to make his stomach ache. “Oh my god, that is so bad.”

  “But true,” Wyatt pointed out. “At least, the scale is accurate. Poutine far exceeds human appeal.”

  It stung a little, in a strange way, but Mat couldn’t stop smiling anyway. “Okay. So, do you know any other bad pick-up lines in French you want to teach me?”

  Wyatt looked only mildly surprised, and his grin looked a little devilish. He made a show of tapping his chin, then sat back and smiled. “Si t’étais un char, tu serais une Ferrari.”

  Mat laughed. “Okay, well, I know I recognized the word Ferrari.”

  “Did you?” Wyatt challenged.

  Mat’s cheeks heated. “I think so. I think you’re probably giving me some other cheesy bullshit, like if I was a car, I’d be a Ferrari.”

  Wyatt’s grin showed a pair of soft dimples. “Perhaps. Learn another phrase to tell me, and I’ll confess.”

  “So unfair,” Mat said with a pout.

  “I’m a better teacher than your bored-sounding French app,” Wyatt insisted.

  Mat laughed. “I…oh, whatever. Fine. I’ll do it. But you better teach me some good shit,” Mat insisted.

  Wyatt put his hands up in surrender. “Ouais. Only the best for you.”

  “So, do all books come in braille?” Mat asked after they’d finished washing up. They’d gone back to the guest-house and Wyatt was messing with the DVD player as Mat ran his fingers along the books Wyatt had stuffed in the shelves.

  Wyatt’s face turned up, his brow furrowed. “All books…?”

  “Like, when books get printed. They come in ebook, audio, print. Do they always come in braille too?” Mat felt more and more like an idiot for asking. He’d never even considered something like braille would be open to him, but he actually had done alright remembering them on the playing cards.

  Wyatt let out a small laugh and shook his head. “No. Only a small percentage really.”

  “That’s…why? That doesn’t make sense.” Mat pulled one of the books from the shelf and saw it was a copy of Lord of the Rings, volume one.

  “Only a very small percentage of blind people read braille with any kind of fluency,” Wyatt said. “It’s time consuming and really expensive, so they tend to discourage it in schools in favor of audio.” He pushed to his feet, walking over and reaching out to touch the book Mat was holding. His fingers brushed along the front, and he chuckled. “This is the first one I read on my own when I was little. My dad tried to get the braille institute to print Louis L’Amour for me, but there wasn’t a demand at the time.”

  Mat blinked. “Like…the old westerns guy? Your dad was into Old West stuff?”

  At that, Wyatt flushed and rubbed the back of his neck, then took the book from Mat like he needed something to do with his hands. “You didn’t wonder about my name?”

  “Your name? What…” Then it clicked, and the laugh escaped before Mat could stop it. “Oh my god… Wyatt Earp? Like the Tombstone guy?”

  “Like the Tombstone guy,” Wyatt murmured. His flush deepened. “I had a love-hate relationship with my father’s obsession. But ah…it was something we shared, you know? Because I was nothing like my brothers.” He turned, taking shuffling steps to the little love-seat, then pat the cushion beside him. “I was going to put it on.”

  “Tombstone,” Mat repeated.

  Wyatt shrugged. “Sometimes when it’s been a long week, it’s the only thing that calms me down.”

  It was probably the strangest coping mechanism Mat had ever heard about, but he wasn’t going to turn down the invitation. He’d already fucked up enough, not coming out to Wyatt when he had the chance, and he wasn’t quite sure how he was going to fix it. Or if he wanted to. Knowing he was bi was one thing, but coming out to anyone…the fear of being an imposter, the fear that he wasn’t gay enough to want another man, weighed on him, choked him. He couldn’t bring him
self to take up space where he didn’t belong.

  “We can watch something else if you like,” Wyatt offered.

  Mat snapped back to himself, hurrying to take the seat Wyatt offered. “No, this is totally fine. Uh. Is this the one with Val Kilmer? I got me two guns… or however it goes?”

  Wyatt chuckled. “Mm. It is.” He used the remote to start the movie, and it picked up mid-scene where a grim-faced cowboy was about to make a mess in a dusty street.

  “Can you…” Mat stopped himself. He’d been an ass enough for one night.

  “I think I know what you want to ask, and it’s okay,” Wyatt told him, leaning a little closer. “I don’t mind.”

  “It’s just so much action,” Mat blurted. “How do you even know what the hell is going on?”

  “When I was little,” Wyatt said, turning the TV down a bit, “I struggled. Not because I was disabled, but because my parents and my brothers wanted me to defy the odds. They wanted me to be that blind man who conquered Everest. They wanted the disabled inspiration, not the anxious child who didn’t walk until he was nearly two and a half, who didn’t speak until he was three, who was bad at more than one subject in school. They wanted the boy who was brave enough to go outside and play with his brothers, but they got the child who was too afraid to let go of the porch railing.”

  “Shit,” Mat breathed out.

  Wyatt smiled in spite of the tone in his voice. “I was angry. Jealous that they could do things I couldn’t. I did so poorly in the regular school my parents had to send me to the city to study with other blind kids. And I should have found a community—and I did, but not until I was a lot older. When I was little, my dad had finally gotten his way—had gotten his little Wyatt Earp. But I wouldn’t be the brave law man who saved a town. I wanted to give him something, though, so we’d do this. Every Friday night, we’d eat chili—his version, so it was probably terrible—and he’d put this movie on, and he’d painstakingly describe each and every scene, each and every time, until I knew it all by heart. He wanted to take me there some day, and I wanted to go. I learned to ride a horse just in case there really were dusty roads and swinging saloon doors.”

  “Did you ever get there?” Mat asked, his voice a little too soft.

  Wyatt shook his head. “He had a stroke when I was seventeen. He didn’t die, but he can’t really travel unless he has to. His left side is paralyzed, and he has trouble speaking. He’s regained a lot of his independence, but he got…meaner since it happened. He stopped watching it with me.”

  Mat licked his lips and wanted to draw Wyatt into an embrace, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. “Um. Maybe we could watch it another time?”

  Wyatt’s brows lifted. “It doesn’t bother me.”

  “No yeah, I get that,” Mat said, though he suspected Wyatt wasn’t being entirely truthful. “Just…I thought we could um…we could check out braille. See if it’s something I really can retain. I get by okay, but being able to read even a little, you know…”

  Wyatt smiled. “Yeah. I think I do.” He rose and Mat watched him grab the Lord of the Rings back off the shelf, and he couldn’t stop his grin. “It’s not easy, but I have a feeling you’ll be good at it.”

  “Then you have a lot more faith in me than I do,” Mat said a little sardonically.

  “I can live with it,” Wyatt said with a quiet sigh. “I have enough strength to believe for both of us, until you’re ready to believe in yourself.”

  Mat’s throat went tight, and he realized right then, he had nothing to say back.

  Chapter Eight

  Shutting off his feelings for Mat wasn’t the easiest thing in the world, especially after Mat showed up a few days later, asking Wyatt to properly teach him to read the books on his shelf. He wanted to say no—mostly to protect himself, but ultimately it was what Wyatt had always done. Teaching had come naturally to him, even if his past experience hadn’t been teaching braille to a man with a traumatic brain injury.

  And Mat took to it with a surprising proficiency, even with his earlier claims that his brain struggled with learning new concepts. Wyatt had gone down to the Center for the Blind in Denver and picked up a few beginner books—and there was a small sense of irony in sitting down a grown man and teaching him to read The Hungry Caterpillar, but Mat’s quiet laughter and utter joy at actually starting to understand the written word—even if it wasn’t the one he had been used to—made it all worth it.

  The only trouble—Wyatt was falling harder. Mat was clever and sweet, and though the guys at Irons and Works all tended to be flirts, Mat seemed singularly focused on Wyatt, which was driving him a little crazy. If he knew what was good for him, he would have put a stop to it.

  Instead, he continued to tease the younger man, offering him bad pick-up lines and the translations in exchange for mastering a book page or learning a new phrase in Wyatt’s mother tongue. A lot of their lessons turned into dinner—which led to watching Tombstone and Cat Ballou and Mat laughing himself hoarse at Wyatt’s uncanny ability to mimic any line from the drunk priest or Doc Holliday, even if he was entering the room mid-scene.

  Wyatt found himself wanting to sit closer, wanting to touch more, wanting to keep Mat around as long as possible. Maybe he was doing it on purpose. Maybe it was the sting of realizing his marriage was nothing like he thought was, which caused him to seek out a man completely and totally unattainable, so he was risking nothing but a bruised ego.

  “Hey,” Mat said when he showed up for their usual lesson. There was a tension in his voice that Wyatt hadn’t heard, and he immediately stood up from the sofa.

  “What’s the matter?”

  Mat let out a small laugh. “It’s fucking crazy how you can do that.”

  “Read your tone? Trust me, it’s not a skill. You’re an open book, Mateo.”

  “And you’re too good at paying attention, cowboy,” Mat said. The easy way the word slipped off Mat’s tongue made Wyatt shiver, and what was worse, Mat didn’t seem to realize the intimacy of giving him that nickname. “And it’s nothing.”

  “Lying,” Wyatt pointed out, choosing to ignore the rapid beating of his heart. He tracked the way Mat moved across the room, then closed the distance to meet him. Not that there was much in that tiny house, and that made it a little worse.

  Mat’s sigh was ragged and tired, and Wyatt wanted to reach out to comfort him. “I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow,” he said. “He wants to order an MRI, but he wants to see me first, and I’m stressing myself out.”

  Wyatt felt a small pang of worry. “Is everything alright?”

  “Maybe. Uh. My aphasia has been kind of bad lately. Along with migraines, and it’s probably nothing, but he wants to make sure. I really just…really don’t like doctors,” Mat admitted in a very small voice.

  Wyatt licked his lips, ideas clicking in his brain that he wasn’t even sure he could pull off, but he wanted to strip Mat bare of those fears, at least for a little while. “Order a car to Denver,” he said after a second.

  “What?” Mat’s voice was startled and a bit stronger than before.

  Wyatt turned away from him, walking to the bookshelf where he’d rested his long cane, and he curled his hand around the rubber grip. “When I first moved here, I wanted to go to the aquarium, but I felt silly asking anyone to go with me. They have audio descriptions and braille on their plaques, and a touch pool. I’ve always loved being around the sea. It’s soothing, and we can’t have that here—not exactly, but the aquarium is close. Do you want to come with me? Take your mind off the appointment?”

  There was a long silence, and Wyatt could all-but feel the tension radiating off Mat. And just when he thought he was going to be rejected, Mat let out a breath and laughed. “Yeah, okay. That could be fun. I haven’t actually been since I first moved here.”

  Wyatt made a startled noise. “Then I’m happy to reintroduce you. I’ll pay for the car, if you can just order it.”

  “I got it, man. No worrie
s.” Mat went silent apart from the soft audio Wyatt could hear blaring from his earbud. “Fifteen minutes. You cool with that?”

  “I’m cool,” Wyatt told him, mimicking his tone with a grin. “I’m going to find some better shoes and I’ll be right out.” In truth, he needed a minute to himself, because this was playing with fire, and he was the only one at risk of getting burnt.

  Slipping into his bedroom, he busied himself finding his walking shoes, his hands running over his shirt, then his jeans. He’d been dressing casually since arriving in Fairfield, his teaching clothes at the back of the little closet untouched and unwanted. Wyatt desperately missed pieces of his past, but not the in-betweens. Not the things that made him feel worthless and helpless.

  He could still recall, with aching clarity, the day Pomme had taken her last breath. He’d been in a daze when his brother had driven him to pick up her ashes, and how only Declan had stood at his side when he had her urn entombed. His family thought he was being over the top—it was just a dog, he could get another one. It was one of the few times he had the very profound revelation that they would never truly understand him, no matter how much they loved him.

  It was why he couldn’t let them know he was here. Why he couldn’t bring himself to truly miss them. He needed this—he needed to prove to himself that Ioan, his brothers, his parents—they’d all been wrong about him. He could live without them, happy and content.

  And he was getting there. At some point, his crush on Mat would fade into friendship. He might meet someone else, might take a chance again as soon as he was ready. Until then, he was letting himself open up to others, and he couldn’t regret it. The men at the tattoo shop had accepted him in a way he hadn’t expected, and he wasn’t interested in letting that go.

  “Sorry,” Wyatt said, walking out when Mat told him the car had arrived. “I didn’t mean to take so long.”

  “No worries, man,” Mat said. “He’s parked right outside the front door.”