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Because this was Artair at his purest. When he didn’t know he was being watched. When he was just being his true self.
And the true man was somehow even more incredible.
The way he bent down to plant his seeds, so big in form but so gentle in act—brushing the soil aside with soft fingers and returning it with tender pats.
The way he paused to take it all in, considering his next move and strategizing the layout of the trellises.
The way he stopped periodically to play with Bowie, darting left and right like an overcaffeinated football player.
The way he was just him, unpretentious and unashamed.
After too long staring, Luca had to grip the binoculars hard with both hands, forcing himself to focus on the distant mountaintops, resisting the temptation to run outside and kiss the hell out of him.
Luca was peering through six pounds of glass when Bowie startled him, leaping into his lap out of nowhere. His tongue lolled about at the belly rub he immediately received.
“Naaaw, so heartwarming,” said Artair from the balcony, ducking to the nearest window, wide open to let in as much breeze as possible. He was slicked wet, with a red-flushed face and brown-dusted hands. “Not that warming is much of a problem. It’s boiling out there!”
“Only cause you’re so hot,” said Luca, leaning to the window and accepting the kiss, the one he’d been thinking about for the last five hours.
His instinct to slide in his tongue—and to leap out the window and tear the man’s shorts off—was halted when Artair unexpectedly pulled away.
The gardener stared at his own tented shorts. “No! You stay out of this. We’re going to be good today.”
Luca batted his eyelids. “I know a few things that could help him relax?”
“And please, never stop doing those things or I might actually die,” said Artair, his cheeks pink against that charming glint of green. “But I thought we might do something else first?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve gotten sick of screwing the afternoon away.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t get too worried about that,” said Artair, giving his prominent bulge a boing with his thumb. “But how do you feel about a hike beforehand?”
“Oh, that sounds great!” said Luca, a little embarrassed that they hadn’t done it sooner. It wasn’t that they hadn’t talked about exploring. It was just that those conversations tended to morph into details of new and interesting places for them to frolic. Which inevitably led to them getting some practice in on the frolicking before they could follow through on the location. “Where abouts?”
“Well, I’ve seen a ton of your home state over the years, but you’ve never seen mine.”
“Hiking to California might be a bit of a stretch?”
Artair waggled his eyebrows. “I’ll give you a stretch.”
“I thought you were being good?”
“Sorry, force of habit! And not the state of California. Just one of its plants.”
“Huh?”
“Come on, trust me, I know you’ll like it.”
“How could you know that?”
“Because you like mine?”
Luca blinked. As was now common, the man’s playful smile made him sure that he was missing something.
To help him along, Artair started playing with his bulge, making it jut out so hard that his pockets were stuck flat against his hips.
Eventually, Luca’s own way with words caught up to him, and he groaned at the awful pun. “A redwood tree? In Washington State?”
It had to be a trick. Everyone knew that the tallest trees in North America stopped in southern Oregon, where the climate changed from hot and dry to green and wet.
