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I parked my Harley in the garage and felt him lean against my back, arms tightening a fraction before he got off. Like I’d ever turn down hugs from my Little Wren. It might be time for me to dust off my sketch pencils and see if I still had a sketchbook around, because I’d love to draw him the way I saw him, eyes closed, head tilted, as well as when his eyes were on the horizon as he sang his heart out. He deserved to see himself through the lens of someone who loved him.

Each time he took to the stage, the true power and magnitude of his voice began to shine through more. There were times when he swaggered like a fucking beast, that growl of his sending goosebumps down my spine, ‘cause damn. He had the kind of stage presence some only dreamed of, when he chose to let everyone see it, that is.

He’d grow out of hiding it though. I’d be there every step of the way to ensure that no one ever caused him to retreat back inside of his shell. So much of his focus had been on getting Bowie to quit hiding who he was that he never noticed how much he did it too. He’d been trying to be a guitarist and while his playing hadn’t been bad, he was meant to be up front delivering all the emotion he packed into every word he sang. His heart bled with those words. He’d lived the pain in them. No one would ever be able to deliver them the way he did. To think, he hadn’t even been auditioning that day. The band would have missed out on a magnificent treasure. Soon, the world would know what I already did:

Tony was a badass rock god in the making. Period.

Tonight, though, I let my Little Wren inside and pulled the toppings out while he explored the ice cream choices. The look on his face when I led him past the living room and down the hall to the bedroom, ice cream dishes in hand, was a mix of shock and awe.

“You didn’t think we were going to sit in the kitchen with our treats, did you?” I asked. “These sundaes were meant to be savored while we enjoy our movies.”

Inside the room, I took his ice cream and placed it on the dresser beside mine so I could peel his T-shirt off. When he reached for the button on his jeans, I batted his hands away and undid it myself, stripping him down to his briefs and myself down to my boxers. The whole time he watched me like this was the most magical moment of his life.

Talk about a sense of pride at being the one to put that look on his face.

He kept watching me as I drew the covers back, propped the pillows against the headboard and returned to him, tipping his head up so I could kiss him thoroughly.

“Now we’re ready to enjoy our treats,” I declared as I pulled Cars up on the streaming service app while he climbed into bed.

I passed him his ice cream and settled in beside him to enjoy mine, the warmth of his body pressed against me felt like love and home all rolled up into one sensation I didn’t have words for. Profanity, I could do in my sleep. Any state where I was not sufficiently caffeinated was cause for at least a half dozen explicit words. Some of the folks who’d worked with me over the years had commented that I needed to come equipped with a bleepity, bleep, bleep, bleep, switch built in. Yeah, it was said with love, I wasn’t even the biggest loveable asshole among the Masterson family.

Tony never saw me that way. In fact, I was beginning to feel like he looked at me as a safe space, the calm in the storm, so to speak. We’d leave the flowery words to him and the rest of the band.

Race cars flew around the track in colorful shades while we enjoyed our ice cream. Tony never shoveled it in, he savored it tiny bite after tiny bite, scraping the sides and bottom when he was done, before placing it on one of the end tables. Mine had been long gone by then, allowing me to engage in my new favorite pastime.

Watching him.

When a bleary-eyed, confused, blinking Lightning McQueen realized he was on the highway among a bunch of strange cars, Tony cracked up laughing, one arm snaked across my abs, head pillowed against my shoulder as we watched.

“Oh shit, that is soooo Bowie first thing in the morning,” Tony declared, giggling more as Lightning frantically took off, leaving chaos and mayhem in his wake. “This one morning, he watered his Fruit Loops instead of Percilla, and spent a good five minutes cussing the coffee pot out for not brewing him a cup, before he realized that he’d forgotten to plug it in. At one point, I seriously feared for the future of that pot when he threatened to drop it out the window of his apartment.”

“I tell you what,” I said, chuckling at the memory I was suddenly hit with, “a coffee pot that fails to do its job properly around here rarely gets a second chance to behave. It better figure out how to plug itself in, ‘cause when I push that button, I expect results.”

Every giggle and squirm made me laugh harder.

“I almost got arrested for doing grievous bodily injury to one of those truck stop coffee vending machines,” I admitted.

“Dude. I’m both intrigued and terrified to ask what the hell it did to piss you off so bad.”

“I don’t know if it was glitchy, out of everything else, or someone had put a fucking hex on it, but all it would give me was hot cocoa. Half the crew was holding the steaming rejects I’d passed them in pursuit of the elixir of life. Finally, after I’d tried every button but one, a smartass you’re rather familiar with nudged me out of the way and hit the decaf button.”

“Oh no.”

“Yeah the fuck he did, grinning the whole god damned time too, especially when what came out of that machine was the last fucking coffee on this planet I’d ever let pass my lips.”

“It was Diamond, wasn’t it?”

“Of course it was Diamond. Who else but Diamond would pull that shit and have the nerve to suggest that I should take it as a sign from the universe that it might be time for me to cut back on my caffeine intake?”

“As if.”

“Exactly.”

“The only reason he’s still with us today is because it’s bad form to drown the talent in a truck stop bathroom.”

Sputtering, he tried to find words, failed, and the giggles overtook him again.

“So, what did you do?” Tony asked. “’Cause I know you did something to make him pay for that travesty.”