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Ryan laughed. “Yeah, that was wild.” He moved his left hand slightly against his husband’s, lining the two rings up. “Anyway, you see these?”
“Yeah.”
“Those? Mean that this is forever, OK? I’m here, Hayes. I’m here for the good, the bad, the ugly, all of it. Whatever you struggle with, I’ll do what I can to help you through it. And if I can’t, then I’ll struggle right alongside you. But you don’t ever have to do any of this alone again. You understand that, right?”
Hayes lifted Ryan’s left hand to his face and kissed it. “I do. I just worry ‘cause I don’t wanna lose you again.”
“If there’s one thing I can promise you, Tyler, it’s that you won’t. I’m in it.”
They lay there together for a bit, silent except for the sound of their breathing and hearts beating, before Ryan finally sat up and stretched. “I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted. And I have to get up early. Wanna move this party to the bedroom?”
After Hayes treated his husband to a quick hand job while they both brushed their teeth, and after Hayes completed his nightly moisturizing routine, which he was unable to talk Ryan into joining, they crawled into bed. Ryan slid behind Hayes, pressing his chest against his back, wrapping an arm around him, and swinging his leg on top of Hayes’s. “Do you remember?” he asked quietly, as Hayes rested a hand on top of Ryan’s leg.
“Of course. This is how we fell asleep together that first night on the road.”
“Yeah, until you ditched me halfway through the night and blamed it on my snoring.”
“I was fucked up about it, Rook. Everything happened so fast that night, and I didn’t know what to feel. It freaked me out a little. And I don’t wanna hear it. At least I fuckin’ gave you some sloppy head. You wouldn’t even touch my dick. I had to jerk off.”
“I was fucked up about it, too.”
“Funny how much has changed in just over a year, eh?”
Ryan didn’t answer, and very soon after, Hayes heard him snoring lightly.
Smiling, Tyler Hayes closed his eyes and made a mental note of everything about this moment: the way Ryan’s body felt against his, the way he smelled, the sound of his breathing. He knew that the road ahead of him was going to be a long one, full of twists, turns, and challenges of a magnitude he couldn’t even imagine.
“The rest of your life? That’s the challenge.”
And that may have been true.
He would always be an addict.
He would always be in recovery.
He would always have to fight like hell against his demons.
But he’d never again have to do any of it alone.
The unstable environment in which he’d grown up. Not knowing who his father was. Having been sexually abused and developing an aversion to his own name. And having overcompensated for all of it until it caught up with him, resulting in him turning to drugs and alcohol to cope. Those things were real, yes, but he decided that he’d no longer allow them to define him or to have any power over him.
After having spent most of his life searching, he exhaled contentedly and closed his eyes, cautiously optimistic for the rest of his life, during which he’d finally get to know the real Tyler Hayes.
And maybe he’d even learn to love him, too.
???
Epilogue
15 years later
“Hayes, I have someone on the phone asking what time the 16u tourney starts on Friday.”
“Um…check the schedule,” he pointed to the desk. "It should be right there in that green binder.”
“Oh…yup, here it is. Thanks.”
Hayes left the front office and made his way into the lobby, where he spotted one of the mite coaches. “Yo, you seen my fuckin’ husband? Been lookin’ everywhere for him.”
