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I find Rae already in bed, in a tent the stove has made warm and cosy, and despite practising what I need to tell him, I can’t say a single word when he rolls over and doesn’t only open tired eyes. He opens his arms, and I do exactly as he asks without speaking. I strip down to join him, and for all that I’ve got things to tell him before we have to say goodbye again, kissing Rae hello is more important.
RAE
Man, Hayden is a sight for sore eyes, and after the last month, mine have never been grittier. I’ll have to wait until later to rub them. Right now, my hands are busy. So is my mouth, but I guess that’s no surprise to this man who strips off his clothes with steady hands and slides under a thick quilt to join me. He knows how I tick—understands how once I have an impulse, I have to voice it.
“It’s only been four weeks.”
He nods, his face buried in the crook of my shoulder where his lips are soft and his beard can’t tickle now he’s clean-shaven. I’d miss his beard if this weren’t a signal he’s been kinder to himself lately—that he can risk a close shave with a razorbecause his hands will let him. I wriggle until I can kiss his jaw, my lips tingling at the faintest rasp of stubble before I let him get back to his nuzzling, and I keep talking.
“A single month, Hayden.”
He lifts his head away, and part of me is pissed off I opened my mouth and stopped him from continuing, but I’ve spent the last month planning this conversation, so I keep going. “Just thirty days, so why the fuck did it feel like forever?”
Hayden opens his mouth as if he has an answer. He shuts it just as quickly and dips his head again to pick up from where he left off, and when he sucks a taut stretch of skin where nerves always spark to life for him, I forget everything I had to tell him.
Or almost.
Here’s something we both learned after visits to specialists timed to coincide with my last few visits: When stress adds to damage already blocking a brain’s pathways, cognition can take wild detours. Put those short circuits under pressure and rationality takes a backseat. Primal drivers take the wheel, like panic and survival instincts, which are almost impossible to communicate your way out of while you’re busy glitching.
Explain how you think the world will end for everyone who is precious to you if you stop pushing a boulder uphill?
Irrational doesn’t even come close, but voicing any of it would be a lot. Too much. So silence becomes habitual, according to the doctors. And lonely, according to me, which means I need to let him know what I’ve made happen in the month since I last saw him, but first I need to push against his silence. I do that physically, both hands against his chest, and he rolls onto his back so easily for me. I prop myself up and look into eyes full of constellations I’d dot on paper if this weren’t more important. “You were about to say something, Hayden. What was it?”
This pause is long and drawn out, but that’s okay. It gives me time to map everything I’ve missed about his long and solid body. He’s still a lot while naked. Still firm in all the right places and soft where my fingers splay over evidence he’s slowed down enough lately to enjoy treats baked by Stefan’s mother. I kiss his bare belly and then get busy dragging off my own T-shirt and boxers before prompting him to spill whatever it was he almost told me.
“Go on. I’m listening.”
I also swing a leg over his hips, my cock against his, which sparks more heat than the stove. It’s good to rock there on him. To get even hotter. To kiss and sweat and lose time to this reconnection. Capturing his wrists is even better, because now I’ve really got him.
We’re chest-to-chest, both of us hard for each other, and soft too where it really matters. My heart must be, it squeezes so hard when he murmurs. “I was gonna say I missed you too.”
We kiss again, and fuck me but I’ll never tire of how well we fit together. His mouth is a warm and wet welcome home—or almost, because yes, we’ve spent plenty of winter nights here like honeymooners, but home this tent isn’t. I’ll talk to him about that just as soon as he spills what is really on his mind.
It will have to wait until after we get off now Hayden starts to fight my hold. His squirms tell me all he’s thinking about right now is us—me and him together—and about making me feel good, but he only has to look at me to do that.
My fingers flex over bones with old breaks and across muscle made by years of working hard for other people, and yeah, I’ve got a lot to discuss with him, but for now we’re fucking.
Only fucking isn’t the right word, is it? Not for this sudden roll and for me to be on my back laughing up at a giant who was only playacting that I could pin him.
Hayden smiles down at me, flushed but shadowed, and I have to see more of him. The lamp I reach for almost falls before casting him with a wash of warm gold. He’s molten and so is his mouth on my cock. He kneels between my legs and sets me alight, and I go straight from smouldering to an inferno, the same as ever, when he looks up. And this eye contact? This bond between us?
It’s everything.
I can’t let distance snap it.
Hayden sucks me down, only pulling off when the hand I run through his hair must clench without me knowing. He disentangles my fingers, then leans across me and gets busy with lube, and watching him open himself up for me like this will never get old.
I get my mouth on his cock while he’s two knuckles deep, and he lets out the kind of sound I’m pretty sure canvas walls can’t muffle.
We need bricks and mortar, and that’s on my list for later. Right now, I’m busy sliding a finger in alongside his, and his stomach hollows, quivering, and he squirms again. His hips lift, and I want my dick inside him more than breathing, so I do that.
I also want a whole lot more than fucking him like this in our future.
I want a front door to paint pink with him.
A bed no other newlyweds have slept in.
A place where my restless roots can sink into soil next to sunflowers we plant together.
