Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/5131052.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Hockey_RPF
  Relationship:
      Jamie_Benn/Tyler_Seguin
  Character:
      Jordie_Benn, Jamie_Benn, Tyler_Seguin
  Additional Tags:
      Alternate_Universe_-_Homeless, Homelessness, body_image_issues, Podfic
      Welcome, Fanart_Welcome, the_dog_doesn't_die, Past_Alcohol_Abuse/
      Alcoholism, Coming_Out, Coming_of_Age
  Series:
      Part 1 of homeless!tyler
  Stats:
      Published: 2015-11-02 Completed: 2015-11-03 Chapters: 2/2 Words: 73208
****** Sink These Roots Deep ******
by LadyJanelly
Summary
     The trick to not getting broken, Tyler decides early on, in the first
     winter he's on his own, is to not care about anybody so much that
     they can break you.
     He manages to follow that rule, right up until he meets Jamie.
     ===========
     2009: Jamie's rookie year. He's got his future laid out in front of
     him. He's still lost in so many ways. Letting a boy like Tyler into
     his life is the best bad-idea he's ever had.
Notes
     Enormous gratitude to MissBeeksi for the awesome beta-job (back in
     July, omg I'm such a slacker at editing).
     And a super-big thank-you to iamsmilingallthetime for the intense
     feedback and concrit every step of the way. I couldn't have done it
     without your kind words and support and the help of seeing the fic
     through someone else's eyes.
     Other warnings: Tyler is 17 at the beginning of this fic, which is
     legal in Dallas. Deals with subjects surrounding homeless teenagers--
     survival sex, a history of abuse, alcohol use/overuse, homophobia.
     Touches on the subject of religion.
***** Chapter 1 *****
The puppy is half-dead when Tyler finds it sniffing along a back-alley in Oak
Lawn. Ribs and spine and hip-bones visible through its fur, half its face
covered with the dried crust of some kind of goop that’s leaking out of its
eyes, belly too-round and hard, distended with parasites.
Tyler’s got no business messing with the thing. It’s just that he skipped out
on the guy he’d spent the week with, well before dawn, needed to get out of
there before the requests for things Tyler wasn’t into turned into demands.
It’ll be another hour before the library opens, and he already ate some
breakfast from 7-11. He’s bored, and the puppy is the only friendly thing
moving at this time of day. He has a vague thought, a memory of that time his
dad took him and the girls out to Polson Pier, back when dad was trying to show
off what a good parent he could be. Tyler remembers a couple of teenage boys
with a cardboard box and a half-dozen cute puppies inside. The sign had said
two hundred bucks a pop, and Tyler figures if he can get this one looking
healthy, looking cute like those, maybe he could get forty for it.
He shifts his backpack to the other shoulder, looks both ways for potential
trouble in the early morning quiet and sits himself on the curb. Nobody should
be coming by until the garbage men. He makes kissy-noises until the puppy turns
his way, whining and tentatively wagging its tail. “Hey there, hey,” he calls,
and the dog isn’t real steady on its feet, that baby-puppy waddle compounded by
weakness and hunger. Its dry nose butts into his hand and he touches its head.
The cocoa-colored fur is softer than he expected, and he grins as it tries to
crawl into his lap.
“Hey now,” he warns, lifts the dog and sees that it is actually a girl-dog. Her
oversized paws paddle uselessly at the air. She feels like twigs in his hands,
no weight to her at all. She’s desperate to get to him now that she’s
recognized him as friendly, whining and lunging to get closer.
“Hey girl, you gotta play it cooler than that.” The dog latches onto one of
Tyler’s hands, sharp little baby teeth chewing on the heel of his thumb.
“Ow, shit, I know you’re hungry.” He turns the pup around where she can’t gnaw
on him anymore. It’s not like he has money for dog-food lying around. He spends
most of his days making sure he has food and shelter enough that he keeps
looking like the kind of boy people want to give more food and shelter to. He’s
careful to keep clean, keep neat. He keeps his options open, a boy strangers
can take out to dinner and let crash on their couch. Sweet enough for the
lesbians to want to mother and hot enough that the old queens like to watch him
rake their leaves or sweep their pools. He has no business at all messing with
dogs on the side of the road.
He spends four bucks on a bottle of milk and a Big Bite hotdog, the puppy
stuffed in his backpack and worryingly quiet. He sits and feeds her at one of
the café tables on Hunky’s side patio, pieces of bun dipped in the milk for her
to gulp down.
“The fuck am I supposed to do with you?” he asks, and the puppy doesn’t answer.
 
==================
 
Jamie grits his teeth and takes the ramp from Woodall-Rodgers, back to 35
north. Out of the corner of his eye he can see the glowing silhouette of a
building he is sure is next to his new apartment. He just can’t get to it using
any method other than flight, and while he loves his truck (enough to drive it
down from Victoria but not enough to pay more than it’s worth to have the damn
thing shipped), it isn’t really meant for flying.
The thing is, his phone died hours ago--some necessary part in the charger-plug
of the truck has given up conducting electricity. He has seen the apartment
building, last month with the Stars’ real estate agent. The problem is, she had
done all the driving, and there had been so many places they’d looked at.
Dallas sprawls huge and tangled, and it’s the first time he has actually driven
here. It looks so different in the dark, and he’s sure there wasn’t as much
construction last time. Half the roads are one-way, and not a damn one of them
runs either north-south or east-west; a half-dozen of them have a forty-five
degree bend in them somewhere between the major highways. He’ll be on a road
and the name will change twice in two miles. He cannot get to where he’s trying
to go.
He pulls off the highway, and it’s like going underwater as the ramp goes down
and dark warehouses block his view of the skyline. He makes half a dozen turns,
mostly at random. There’s a La Quinta Inn, and a Denny’s next door. He really,
seriously, considers giving up and getting a hotel room for the night, ten
minutes away from an apartment that’s furnished and has all his stuff and he’s
so fucking close.
He pulls into the Denny’s instead, and parks. Sits for a second to try to tamp
down the feeling of frustration and helplessness. He is a god-damn
professional. He is an adult. He can do this without big-brother Jordie to hold
his hand.
He gets out of the truck and goes into the restaurant, up to the cash register.
A group of teenagers laugh loud in the circular booth in the corner; Jamie sees
a bright shock of pink hair on one, another with white-blond. The cashier or
waitress or whatever she is at the front looks halfway between annoyed and
bored.
“One?” she asks, and Jamie shakes his head.
“I was hoping I could get directions? I’m looking for an apartment complex—The
Byron Uptown?”
She shakes her head. “Never heard of it.” Jamie isn’t even sure he has the name
right at this point.
“Bryson? Briton?”
The group of kids are on their feet by now, jostling each other as one of them
tries to collect enough money from the rest to make the bill, and in a second
the waitress is going to be too busy for Jamie’s questions.
“Bison? Biton? Something Cityplace?” It’s all sounding wrong now.
“Hey,” one of the kids says. He’s tall, leanly muscular in a way Jamie has
taught himself not to look at in the locker room. He’s beautiful, golden-brown
eyes and perfect cheekbones. Wide smile and a shallow dimple in his chin. Dark-
tanned shoulders topped with a hint of pink where the Texas sun has been
particularly unmerciful. His brown hair has been cropped down to stubble except
for the center stripe which is a bright pink Mohawk. “You’re Canadian.”
Jamie blinks. “Uh, yeah?”
“Me too,” the kid says, and more importantly, “Where you trying to get to?”
Jamie really should have gone to the next door hotel, gotten a room, charged
his phone, re-checked the email from his real estate agent. He feels color
rising on his cheeks, the embarrassment of talking to a cute guy and looking
utterly stupid.
“Hey, Ty, we need to go,” warns a dark-skinned girl with car keys in her hand.
‘Ty’ waves her off, “One second, hang on.”
“It’s an apartment complex. Briton I think? In uptown?”
“Bryson Cityplace?” the guy asks, uncertain, and glances out the window at
Jamie’s truck. “You meeting somebody?”
“I live there. Or I’m going to,” Jamie corrects, and that smile goes even
wider.
“Dude, are you high?”
“I haven’t been there yet,” Jamie protests. “I just…” he doesn’t feel like he
should bring the Stars organization in on his shame. “Got a new job, and they
set it up. I had the address, but my phone died on the way here.”
“Tyler, come on!” The driver is starting to get genuinely impatient now, and
Tyler takes a step in her direction, hitching his backpack up higher on his
shoulder.
 
“Look, I could get you there, but they’re my ride to where I’m crashing
tonight…” he makes an apologetic shrug. “I hate to be a dick, but could you
hook me up with cab fare or something when we’re done? Or, you know, if you’ve
got a couch at this place you haven’t seen yet, that would work too.”
Tyler kind of half-follows the group into the parking lot, trailing out after
them so he won’t be completely left behind if Jamie turns him down, and Jamie
follows Tyler.
“Yeah,” Jamie promises, anything to not lose his chance of having a guide in
this mess of a city. “That won’t be a problem.”
“Hey,” Tyler calls to his friends, “I’m gonna show this guy around. I’ll catch
up to y’all later, okay?”
There’s a chorus of wolf-whistles and cat-calls at that, like they can read
Jamie’s mind. Tyler flips them off and makes a waist-high jerk-off gesture at
the group of them. He heads around the truck to the passenger side and Jamie
gets in and scrambles to get the fast food wrappers and Red Bull cans out of
the seat before he pops the lock.
Tyler swings his backpack gently into the floorboards and climbs in. “So, uh,
what do I call you?” Tyler asks, and Jamie is glad his sister Jennifer isn’t
there to smack some manners into him.
“Sorry. It’s Jamie,” he says, “Hey, buckle up, okay?”
Tyler does, and then leans down and settles the backpack securely between his
feet like he expects Jamie to take them spontaneously off-roading.
“Okay, so I know where we’re going, but I’m usually walking it, so bear with me
if we have to backtrack, yeah?”
It’s better than Jamie’s flail-tastic crisscrossing of the neighborhood, and
even if Tyler really doesn’t help that much, it feels better to not be alone in
this mess. He glances over in time to catch the nervous flick of Tyler’s tongue
against his bottom lip.
“Alright,” Jamie agrees, and Tyler nods.
“Okay, what you’re gonna want to do is go right out of the parking lot,” Tyler
begins, and Jamie drives.
It is ridiculous, how close Jamie was, how little he was missing it by. Tyler
misses the last turn once, but other than that he gets Jamie there with no
frustration. Jamie pulls up to the building, and the remote clicker the real
estate agent mailed him opens the gate to the parking garage. He drives up,
finds a spot on the fourth floor and turns off the truck.
The growl of Tyler’s stomach is surprisingly loud in the sudden quiet and Jamie
frowns.
“Didn’t you just eat?” he asks, and Tyler grins crooked at him, shrugs like
it’s nothing.
“I was just hanging out waiting for a ride,” he says, and Jamie thinks back.
When the kids were pooling their money for dinner, Tyler hadn’t had any cash
out. “It smells like fries in here.”
“Know anywhere that delivers this late?” Jamie asks, and Tyler nods.
“Yeah. Pizza? I got nothing to chip in.”
“My treat,” Jamie says. He climbs out of the truck, grabs a few of the bags he
didn’t want to send in the moving van, and starts looking for the breezeway to
take them to his apartment.
Jamie isn’t sure what to expect when he slots his key and turns the knob. It’s
pitch dark inside, and he feels around for a switch. The lights come on and
he’s secretly kind of impressed. The furniture is all soft neutrals, dark wood
with creamy upholstery. The kitchen is open to the living room, mottled granite
countertops and crisp stainless appliances. It’s like a hotel where all his
stuff lives, and Jamie feels off-balance at it, the sterility of it. It looks
high end though, and he’s glad he’s not embarrassed by it, to bring a guy back,
even if Tyler is only playing tour guide and not there as a date or anything.
He drops his keys and empties his pockets out onto the island, trying to feel
the natural flow of using a new place. There’s an outlet there, so he digs out
the wall charger and plugs in his phone.
“Make yourself at home,” Jamie says, “I’m just gonna…” he gestures vaguely at
the hall back to what looks like his bedroom. All his stuff should be here, but
he just wants to see that everything made it okay.
Tyler nods. “Sure. I can order if I can use your phone.” Jamie gestures that
it’s fine. “What do you like?” Tyler asks, and Jamie asks for a deep dish
pepperoni, the same thing he always gets.
“Get one for you, if you want something different,” Jamie offers, and Tyler
grins.
Then Jamie goes to look around and find the restroom. Takes a piss and washes
his face and changes out of the clothes he’s been traveling in for fourteen
hours. He stops and looks at himself in the broad expanse of mirror over the
bathroom vanity. Reminds himself what he’s got at stake now, and how slim the
chances are that a guy that looks like Tyler would welcome a pass from one that
looks like Jamie—soft where he should be lean, weak chinned and with eyes too
big for his face.
He comes back out, and the first thing he sees is a dog on his kitchen island,
or puppy at least, bony shoulders and hips and a fat heavy belly between them.
It’s dark-brown and lapping water from a saucer. The second thing he notices is
Tyler, leaning against the counter and watching the puppy, a tumbler a quarter-
full of Jamie’s Dallas-celebration whiskey in his hand.
“Hey!” Jamie objects, more surprised than angry. Tyler grins and meets his eye
and downs the shot before Jamie can stop him. He laughs his way through a
coughing fit, doesn’t object when Jamie takes the glass away. Four hours in
Dallas, and Jamie is giving alcohol to minors, holy shit, this is the kind of
thing the PR department warned him about.
“You said make myself at home,” Tyler protests with a grin.
“Where’d the dog come from?” Jamie asks, trying to distract himself from
Tyler’s broad smile, the way it goes all the way to his eyes, open and
welcoming.
“She was asleep in my bag.” The mutt sits down, takes another lick of water and
then curls up. Jamie’s mother would pitch a fit to see a dog on his kitchen
counter, but the puppy doesn’t look so hot. There’s a wheezing sound to her
breath and Jamie can’t find it in himself to make Tyler put her on the floor.
“I got a chicken and mushroom for me,” Tyler says like Jamie cares which pizza
he got. “I was gonna feed her off my plate, if that’s okay.”
Jamie comes up to the island and snaps his fingers. The puppy’s tail wags
tiredly but she doesn’t get up to go to him. “She got a name?”
“I was calling her Marshall.”
Jamie raises an eyebrow and Tyler huffs.
“Like Eminem?” Tyler offers. “She’s small, but she’s gotta keep going. You
know?”
Jamie nods. “I’ve got towels around here somewhere, if you want to make her a
bed.” Tyler’s face lights up and Jamie’s heart stutters. He turns away before
he gets himself into trouble, before he does something stupid and embarrassing.
He finds the towels in the linen cabinet in the bathroom, and he watches as
Tyler makes up a little nest for the dog in one of the empty moving boxes. His
hands are real gentle with her as he lays her down in it.
Tyler pets her for a moment, soothing as she shuffles around to get
comfortable. “There you go, baby.” He grins down at her and then stands up.
“Hey, those assholes aren’t gonna save me any hot water. You mind if I use your
shower while we wait for the pizza?”
Jamie can’t think of a reason to say no, so he shrugs. He’d been one of the few
players to have their own apartment back home, so he’s used to the guys from
The Rockets hanging at his place, eating his food, drinking his beer and
crashing on his couch. It was one of the perks and costs of not having a billet
family that second year. “Guest bath is that one. Towels are in the cabinet.
There should be some body wash or shampoo around there somewhere.”
“Thanks,” Tyler says, like it’s a big deal. “I really appreciate it.” He
disappears into the bathroom for so long that Jamie thinks he’s either avoiding
Jamie or jerking off in there. The pizza guy comes and goes again, and Jamie is
starting to worry a little, until he hears the shower cut off. He eats a slice
of his pizza and looks up when the door opens.
Tyler looks scrubbed-clean and brighter somehow after his shower, a different
tank-top on, white this time, and a pair of cargo pants that hang low on his
hips. His feet are bare now, long-toed and slender. The pink Mohawk hangs wet
and limp and he rubs one of Jamie’s towels over it, makes it stand up for just
a second before flopping over again.
He grins, bright and sudden, and it hits Jamie like sunlight when he expected
shadows.
“Hey, pizza!” Tyler says, and yeah. That smile isn’t for Jamie.
Jamie had left Tyler the whole couch, but he slides to the floor in front of it
instead, graceful in a way Jamie both envies and wants to touch. He pops open
the pizza box and digs in, eating with a speed and efficiency that’s a little
shocking even to a hockey player. In between bites he picks bits of chicken off
his pizza and feeds them to Marshall, who seems more interested in nosing them
around than actually eating anything.
Tyler polishes off an entire half of the large pizza before he leans back and
sucks his fingers clean. Jamie wants to look away. Wants to be strong enough,
but he just isn’t. Tyler looks at him from under his lashes, speculative.
“Hey, can I suck your dick?” he asks, the same tone of voice as he’d asked to
use the shower.
Oh, Jamie thinks. He feels like he swallowed a puck, ice-cold and rock-hard
hitting him in the gut. “Oh shit,” he says out loud as everything comes
together. “You’re a hooker.” Five hours in Dallas, and he’s alone in his
apartment with an underage male hooker, oh fuck, he’s so dumb.
Tyler’s eyes snap wide then narrow and he jerks back like Jamie slapped him.
“What? Fuck you, dude. I was just trying to be nice.”
“Sorry,” Jamie says before Tyler even finishes protesting, apologizes even
though he’s not sure he was wrong about the situation. “Sorry. I just. Why
would you say that?”
Tyler makes a face that’s half pout and half confused. “Because ‘Hey, can I
look at your dick while I jerk off’ sounded rude in my head.”
Jamie frowns. “Seriously?”
Tyler’s eyes go curious again, like he’s evaluating Jamie.
“You are gay,” he says, and it’s not a question. Jamie feels the color rise on
his cheeks.
“But nobody’s offered to suck your dick before.”
Jamie looks away. Wants to tell Tyler that there was never the right time.
Never the right person.
Tyler pushes back and slides himself up onto the couch, sprawls back on the arm
and watches Jamie. He raises one foot and puts it on the cushion, leaves the
other on the floor. Jamie’s entire world narrows to the V of Tyler’s legs and
he leans back in his chair to keep from reaching out.
“You look at me a lot,” Tyler says, and Jamie’s breath catches in his chest.
Tyler unbuttons his pants and slides the zipper down. He pulls them just far
enough down that Jamie can see the bright white of his underwear, the long
bulge of his dick. He slides his hand over his abs, pulls his shirt up just
enough that a slim strip of pale skin shows, so much lighter than his tanned
shoulders and arms.
“The way you look at me,” Tyler says, low, almost hypnotic, “I think I could
get off on the way you look at me.” He slips one hand inside his briefs, and
Jamie is hard, he’s so hard, sitting back and watching it. Tyler makes a little
gasp as he wraps his hand around himself, still hidden behind the white cotton.
Jamie swallows hard and Tyler smirks, like he got the reaction he was looking
for.
And then Tyler moans, takes a full long stroke and arches his hips into it.
Jamie’s knuckles go white as he grips the arms of his chair.
“Yeah,” Tyler gasps, and he watches Jamie like Jamie is the reason this feels
good, like Jamie is giving this to him. His toes flex against the couch
cushion, his hips shift restless and eager. His free hand reaches down, cups
around his balls. Squeezes them through the cloth as his other hand starts to
jerk in earnest.
“Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck fuck, Jamie,” he pants, and he looks dazed and lost, never
breaking eye contact as a flush crawls up his neck. At the last possible moment
he grabs the waistband of his underwear and yanks it down, and Jamie gets his
first glimpse of Tyler’s dick, long and graceful and red in his hand, pulsing
as he comes over himself, spattering his shirt and the V of his body and down
into the rusty-colored pubic hair. He groans through it, every muscle in his
body going tight, going tense.
Then his shoulders go limp; he sinks into the couch, lax and sated. He grins
crooked at Jamie, gives him a little challenging tilt of his chin.
Jamie stands from the chair in a rush, half-trips on the coffee table as he
flees running to his bedroom door. He slams the door and leans on it like he
expects Tyler to bust it down and then he can’t hold back any more, fumbles his
zipper down and takes out his dick, short and fat and heavy in his hand,
strokes himself three times and comes on his new carpet.
“Shit,” he hisses, and his knees go out and he slides down the door. “Oh,
shit.”
=================
 
Tyler stares at Jamie’s door, the closeddoor, where Jamie went, where Jamie ran
away from the offer of a blow-job or a little two-man circle-jerk action.
“What the fuck?” he asks the empty room, conversational like he expects it to
reply. He’s had guys get weird after sex before. Get pissed at themselves for
wanting to fuck a dude. A few have been pissed at him, like he has any control
over their boner. Tyler thinks back, trying to remember anybody actually
running away from him, from the kind of show he just put on, and he can’t come
up with it ever happening before.
There’s this guy Jason, who Tyler can pretty reliably crash with. Except after
they fool around Jason will pull a pillow and blanket off the bed and sleep on
the floor, because it’s one thing to share some orgasms but sharing a bed is
off-limits somehow. It doesn’t feel good when that happens. Like Tyler totally
doesn’t expect to cuddle with everybody he fucks, but usually the brush-off
isn’t so harsh as that. Or this.
He waits, and Jamie doesn’t come back. Finally he goes back into the guest
bath, cleans himself up, does his hair back tall and changes his shirt (and
that was a waste of his laundromat quarters, getting jizz on a clean shirt).
There’s a fresh toothbrush still in the package and he breaks it open, brushes
his teeth and then puts it in his backpack, along with the toothpaste.
He comes out of the bathroom, feeling more like himself, and there’s still no
Jamie.
“Asshole,” he mutters, but there’s not much he can do about it. He stands
around for a minute, weighing his options. It’s been long enough that even if
Jamie comes out, things will be at best awkward; at worst, he’ll probably kick
Tyler’s ass for being the source of his discomfort.
Leaving it is.
He’s got a half of a pizza that’s his by right though, so he pokes around
Jamie’s kitchen. There is a box of gallon-size zip-lock bags in a drawer and he
takes two and stuffs the leftovers in them and puts them in his backpack. It’s
weird, that he’s breaking the seal on everything, that everything he touches is
new, wrapped, fresh from the store. What kind of job does this for their
employees?
Jamie’s phone and wallet are on the island and he glances at the bedroom again
before he flips the wallet open, rifles through it quick and finds a one, a ten
and hundred dollar bill, American. A hundred is too much, and eleven won’t get
him much further in a cab than he’s willing to walk. Sure as hell won’t get him
up to Ava’s place in Plano. He leaves the big bill and all the cards. He
glances at the ID just enough to confirm that Jamie wasn’t lying when he said
he was from Canada.
He takes the eleven dollars. It should get him back to Oak Lawn at least. The
bars are already closed, and his chances of finding someone to crash with
tonight are getting slimmer and slimmer. He grabs three Gatorades from the
fridge and heads for the door. He pauses, hand on the knob, and realizes he
almost forgot Marshall.
His chest aches, and this is the fucking reason he shouldn’t have picked her
up, shouldn’t have let her chew on his thumb, shouldn’t have spent all day
trying to get her food and water instead of finding himself somewhere not-
shitty to sleep. He goes to her box and she’s curled up, a sleeping little ball
of misery, ribs heaving with her labored breath. Almost all the bits of chicken
he gave her are still there. She’s worse than when he picked her up that
morning, sicker and weaker. He could try, could walk to the vet down on Lemmon
in the morning. Offer them his eleven dollars for some puppy food, but she
needs a hell of a lot more than that. He’s just not sure she’ll make it, no
matter what he does. Another day in his backpack, if he can manage to keep
smuggling her into places with air conditioning, or out in the heat if he
can’t.
But Jamie, Jamie has resources. Can afford a place like this, even if his truck
is inexplicably shitty. And even with his sex-related weirdness, Tyler doesn’t
think he’d hurt Marshall. He’s pretty sure if he asks, Jamie will probably say
no. But if Tyler doesn’t give him the chance…
“You be good,” he murmurs, and strokes her ears for the last time, velvet soft
against his fingers, the only part of her that isn’t rough with dirt and grime
and poor nutrition.
He looks at Jamie’s door. Maybe Jamie could use a friend, too. Maybe Jamie
needs Marshall as much as she needs him.
Tyler closes the front door quietly behind him as he leaves.
====================
It takes Jamie a while, to get up off the floor and move to his bed. He lays
down, just for a minute, trying to wrap his head around Tyler, the craziness of
the last hour. His eyes are tired from so long on the road and he makes the
mistake of closing them.
He wakes to the glare of the morning sun shining through the open blinds. It
doesn’t feel late, but it was almost three a.m. by the time Tyler had gotten
them to Jamie’s place and then they’d eaten and Tyler fucking jerked off on his
couch.
“Shit,” Jamie swears and sits up, remembering Tyler, the impossible things he’d
said, the way he called Jamie’s name as he got himself off. He remembers
leaving, running away like a chicken-shit and not even making sure there was a
spare blanket or something for Tyler to cover up with.
He stumbles, half-asleep and embarrassed at his own bad manners, spills himself
out into the living room and looks around.
And there’s no Tyler.
Marshall’s box has been moved to the center of the open space, but that’s quiet
too. The bathroom door is open, the room behind it dry and empty. He glances
down into the box and the puppy is still there, so Tyler couldn’t have gone
far. The front door isn’t locked. Maybe he just went out for a smoke or
something.
Jamie pokes around his not-empty fridge for a while, finds a pan in a cabinet
to cook the eggs in. He offers Marshall some, but she doesn’t look interested
at all.
Tyler doesn’t come back and Jamie thinks maybe he went out of one of the
secured doors, where he’d need a clicker to get back in, so he locks up and
goes down to the ground floor, walks around the block, and doesn’t see him.
About noon, Jamie finally admits to himself that Tyler is gone. Tyler is gone
and his dog is still in Jamie’s apartment, and Jamie is pissed, for both of
them, for Marshall being dumped and Jamie being used like an animal shelter.
Marshall still isn’t eating, and Jamie sighs and goes to his phone, looks up
the number for the closest veterinarian. “I’ve got a stray puppy,” he tells the
receptionist. “She isn’t looking so good. Can I get her in today?”
They manage to slot him in an hour later, and he packs Marshall up in her box
on the front floorboards of his truck. The place is like a boutique when he
gets there, a waiting room with a five-hundred-gallon tank of bright saltwater
fish, a front counter that’s nicer than the one in his ridiculous apartment,
huge leather lounge chairs to wait in. He feels shabby and out of place as he
waits with his cardboard box full of puppy. He thinks of his signing bonus
though. He has the money and he can’t think of a better reason to spend it. He
just wishes Tyler had stuck around and they could do this together. He doesn’t
think Tyler would be impressed by the waiting room. Tyler would make it a joke
and they could laugh at the huge body-builder looking dude with the tiny fluffy
dog, the sleek woman in a business suit crooning to a yowling cat-carrier.
“Mr Benn?” The receptionist calls, and then it’s Marshall’s turn. He carries
her to the exam room, scoops her out of the box and puts her on the table. The
vet pokes and prods her, feels along her spine and belly.
“Any idea how old she is?” The vet asks and Jamie shakes his head.
“Some kid dumped her on me yesterday. I doubt he knew either.”
The vet hums and looks her over some more.
“Okay. She has a raging sinus infection. Ear infections. Ear mites. Fleas,
worms and mange.” Marshall lays her head in the vet’s hand.
“So what do we do?” Jamie asks.
The vet sighs again. “If you were financially or emotionally invested in this
animal, I would suggest about nine hundred dollars of care. Two kinds of
antibiotics, deworming, Advantage for the fleas. Special food that’ll be easy
for her taxed system to digest. I just can’t guarantee that will be enough, or
that she will grow up to be a dog without major health problems.”
Jamie hesitates. “Are you saying it’s cruel to treat her instead of putting her
down?”
“No. There’s just no guarantee.”
Jamie nods, decided. “Okay, so treat her. Where do I pay?”
 
================
 
“So how do I get fleas out of my truck?”
Jordie chuckles on the phone and Jamie nurses a pang of homesickness.
“How the hell did you get fleas in your first day in Dallas?”
Jamie groans. “There was this kid. And a puppy. I own a dog now.”
Jordie laughs at him.
It feels really good to hear it, even if home is so far away.
================
Jamie kind of expects Tyler to turn back up after he’s taken Marshall to the
vet and bought her half of PetSmart. He’s just glad he’s got a few days before
even the informal practices start and he can spend some time doing the things
Marshall needs to not die, like getting all her medicine in her three times a
day and syringe-feeding her food, those first few days, when she wouldn’t eat
and water when she was too tired to lift her head to drink out of the bowl.
He goes to the gym and watches TV. Calls his brother and sister and his mom on
the regular.
He makes sure his phone is charged and goes for a drive every day, Marshall on
the truck seat beside him. He tells himself he’s learning the streets, figuring
out how to get to the arena and the practice rink and the grocery store. All
the things a responsible adult needs to do.
He tells himself he’s not looking for a frill of pink hair, the rhythm of
Tyler’s walk, the hang of his backpack over his shoulder.
A week goes by and some of the guys plan a Saturday night out in Deep Ellum, on
the southeastern edge of downtown Dallas. Jamie gets there okay, but then it’s
a snarl of traffic on narrow old streets, dozens of bars and clubs spilling
pedestrians out over the sidewalks and into the crawling traffic. Power lines
hang low and lazy over the road and signs advertising ‘Parking here!’ take him
to vacant lots between bars, orange-vested attendants taking ten bucks a car to
squeeze into a grassy space.
It’s nothing like Victoria, nothing like Kelowna. Hard rock and Alt-country and
some sort of techno-noise grinding together, filling the air.
He pays his money and parks his truck and goes to find the guys. The club they
chose is jam-packed, hot and sweaty. The under-21 bracelet on Jamie’s wrist
guarantees him nothing but pop all night. James hooks up early and leaves. Loui
goes home not too much later, to be with his pregnant girlfriend. Jamie hangs
out for a while, trying to get used to being the youngest guy on the team now,
or just about. Listens to the veterans yelling their war-stories over the
pounding music.
He’s not the last to leave, but near enough. The streets are still packed
though, and the bars don’t close for another hour. He’s not looking for that
flash of pink but he sees it anyway; on the opposite sidewalk there’s Tyler,
nose to nose with a guy who has six inches and thirty pounds on him, fist
gripped in the front of Tyler’s t-shirt, yelling angry in his face.
Jamie jaywalks through the crawling traffic and heads that way.
“…Didn’t grab her ass, I swear to god,” Tyler is saying, and Jamie sees
pouting-girlfriend standing with her arms crossed behind muscle-dude. The guy
has a weight category on Jamie too, and he thinks fast to figure out a way to
avoid fighting him.
“Hey, shithead,” he says, and grabs the back of Tyler’s backpack, yanks him
back and out of the other guy’s grip.
“We weren’t done,” the other guy says, and Jamie raises his chin, stares him
down.
“I’ve been looking for this guy,” Jamie says. Baby-face or not, Jamie isn’t
scared at all, and that must be a warning sign the bully won’t ignore. It’s not
often that Jamie’s been on the ice with guys bigger than him, but he knows how
to not show a hint of weakness.
“Come on, babe,” the bruiser says to his girl, and they disappear into the
crowd.
And Jamie keeps a grip on Tyler, and his mock-anger morphs, grows into real-
anger, for leaving his fucking dog at Jamie’s place, for disappearing on them,
for the worry for Tyler’s safety that Jamie just now recognizes in its sudden
absence.
There’s a vacant lot, packed with cars but out of the flow of the crowd and
Jamie shoves Tyler that way.
“Whoa,” Tyler protests, stumbles and hits the ground with one hand before Jamie
hauls him up again. He pushes Tyler along, feeling the anger swelling hot and
hard in his chest. He slams Tyler back against the wall, pins him there with a
hand on his chest.
“The fuck is your problem?” Tyler yells, but nobody stops walking. “It was
eleven fucking dollars! You owed me that much!”
Jamie frowns. “My problem is that you left a dying dog in my fucking apartment,
you little shit.”
The fight goes out of Tyler so suddenly Jamie is sure he’d fall if he took his
hand away. His face just crumples and there is a thump on the hard-packed
ground beside him. Jamie looks down and there’s a fist-size chunk of asphalt by
Tyler’s feet.
“Oh god, she’s dead?” He looks gutted, eyes wide and shoulders hunched in.
“Dying,” Jamie corrects, and he doesn’t really want to forgive Tyler so easy,
but he’s just so wounded by the idea of it. “Or she was. I took her to the vet.
She’s got medicine and stuff now. She’s doing better.”
“Can I see her?” Tyler asks, like he knows it’s a bad idea and can’t stop
himself. “I…please?”
Jamie sighs and steps back.
He should say no. He really should.
“Yeah, come on.”
==================
 
“You didn’t really grab her ass, did you?” Jamie asks as Tyler climbs in the
passenger side of his truck.
Tyler smirks and shakes his head. “Groping people isn’t cool.”
It takes half an hour to get out of the parking lot and through the snarl of
Deep Ellum traffic to open highway.
“Would you really have hit me with a rock?”
Tyler shrugs at that, crooked smile visible as they ride under a streetlight.
“If you were gonna kick my ass over eleven dollars, I was gonna do what I could
to stop you.”
Jamie figures that’s fair.
============
Tyler is quiet for the rest of the ride, and Jamie isn’t sure what’s a safe
topic for conversation.
“Pizza?” he asks at last.
“If you’re buying,” Tyler replies, easy.
Jamie fishes his phone out of his pocket as they stop at a red light and passes
it over. Listens to Tyler’s easy confidence as he orders food.
“I know some other places that deliver late,” Tyler offers when he’s done.
Jamie thinks maybe that sounds like Tyler would like to hang around again. It
doesn’t feel presumptuous to nod.
“Yeah, that would be cool. Next time, I guess.”
They pull into the garage and Tyler shoulders his backpack.
“You don’t have another puppy in there, do you?” Jamie asks, and Tyler shakes
his head, looks a little sheepish.
“Nah. I wouldn’t pull a dick move like that on you twice.” It’s not quite an
apology, but Jamie will take it.
They walk together to Jamie’s door and Jamie unlocks it, leads the way over to
Marshall’s crate, where she’s whining and squirming to be let out and loved on.
It’s worth it, every penny, every pain in the ass dealing with a puppy while
trying to adjust to a new life, the way Tyler’s face lights up like this is
Christmas and his birthday compressed into one moment of pure joy seeing her.
“Oh, baby baby baby,” he croons and goes to his knees on the carpet as Jamie
opens the cage and Marshall scampers over. She takes a moment sniffing at
Tyler’s jeans and hands and getting to know him again and Tyler ruffles her fur
and lets her chew on his fingers.
“She looks good,” Tyler says, and Jamie feels a flush of pride. She lost most
of her pot-belly crapping out half her body weight in dead worms, but she’s got
a little flesh on her bones now; her neck looks less thin, her bones less
fragile.
“You can give her the medicine in the morning,” Jamie grumbles, mostly because
it feels like he should. Like he needs something to stand between him and the
things he could feel for Tyler and annoyance works as well as anything.
“Yeah,” Tyler agrees, and then looks up at Jamie, a flicker of surprise on his
face showing for just a second before he turns back to Marshall, mock-growling
at her and scritching her fur and laying down on the floor so she can climb all
over him.
Tomorrow, Jamie thinks, he’ll tell Tyler about the puppy pre-school behavior
class he wants to take her to, and that she’s going to be too big a dog for
them to let her jump on people and chew on things that aren’t her toys.
For the meantime though, Jamie sits down on one of the barstools by the island
and watches them play.
The pizza delivery texts that they’re downstairs then, before Jamie can do
something embarrassing. He goes down to get it, reminds himself don’t be dumb
all the way back up the elevator.
Tyler has plates out and cans of soda on the coffee table when Jamie gets back,
and Jamie feels a shiver of disquiet at just how happy food makes Tyler, how
glad he is to stuff his face. He wonders what Tyler ate for breakfast, or
lunch. If there was anything at all.
Tyler gulps down two pieces and then picks a bite of chicken from the third.
“No people food,” he says, before Tyler can slip it to Marshall.
“But she’ll like it,” Tyler protests and Jamie shakes his head.
“She likes her food too, and it’s better for her fucked up stomach.”
“Sorry, baby,” Tyler apologizes, and Jamie stops eating to go get her little
dish and fill it so neither of them will feel guilty about eating in front of
her.
After they eat, Jamie offers up his DVD collection and Tyler picks something
with fast action and lots of explosions. They slouch down into the couch and
Tyler brings Marshall up to snuggle on his chest (another bad habit that’ll
need breaking). Jamie looks over during a quiet interlude in the film, and
Tyler is sound asleep, head tipped back, Marshall out cold on his chest. The
collar of his shirt has shifted around and there’s a mark there—Jamie isn’t
sure if it’s a hickey or something he did with all the manhandling earlier.
He gets up and pulls a blanket and pillow out of the linen closet.
“Hey,” he says, soft, and touches Tyler’s shoulder, feels him startle at the
contact. Tyler blinks up at him, awake but not really coherent.
“Lay down or you’re gonna jack your neck up,” Jamie tells him, and Tyler kicks
his shoes off, pushes to the side and lets himself slide down, Marshall held
safe against him. His eyes close again almost before his head hits the pillow,
and Jamie covers him gently.
=============
Movement against his chest startles Tyler awake. He almost shoves Marshall off
the edge of the couch before he figures out that it’s her wriggling that woke
him. She whines and fidgets to get down and Tyler lifts her to the carpet. She
hurries over to the patch of tile in front of the door and squats to piddle.
“Oh shit,” Tyler winces, because he’s pretty sure that’s not cool. He doesn’t
want her to get into trouble, doesn’t want Jamie to have a reason to get rid of
her so he grabs paper towels out of the kitchen and cleans it up, stuffs them
down in the bottom of the garbage can when he’s done.
The clock on the microwave says it’s a little after six a.m. and the glow of
dawn is just starting to warm the sky. If he leaves now, he could walk to the
Cathedral of Hope before the first worship service, the best one. It’s more
traditional than the one at eleven, the attendees an older demographic. Ron and
David might be there, and they usually take him to lunch after, like it’s a
visit from the son they could never have. Their afternoons are nice for Tyler
too, the kind of unconditional affection, the way David asks if he’s taking
care of himself and Ron inquires if any boy has impressed on his heart yet. It
feels good, like family used to back before Tyler fucked that all up.
He looks to Jamie’s closed door, somehow less a rejection this time, for all
it’s closed again and probably locked. Jamie is less of a sure-thing than
showing up at church and finding someone willing to feed Tyler there. The way
he looked at Tyler that first night, the way he looks at Tyler every time he
sees him…well, Tyler thought he knew what to expect, that Jamie would make a
request or at least take Tyler up on his offer.
Jamie running away, that made him unpredictable. Wanting to fuck Tyler and
choosing not to, Tyler isn’t sure what to make of that.
Marshall walks over his feet, bumbling and clumsy and sweet, and he doesn’t
want to leave her again so soon.
And Jamie. Jamie is a mystery Tyler wants to solve, to find what makes him pull
away from the things he so obviously wants. He thinks…maybe if he can get Jamie
to open up, what he’s got hidden in there might be really good, for both of
them.
He crawls back onto the couch, wraps Jamie’s blanket around his shoulders and
lets himself fall back asleep.
 
==================
The smell of fresh coffee draws Jamie out of his bedroom in the morning, early
enough that he’s glad he didn’t have actual alcohol to drink the night before.
He stumbles out and Tyler’s in the kitchen, his mohawk crumpled from sleep, and
he’s…desperately mopping up coffee where it’s spilled over the expanse of
counter, dripping down the cabinets, pooling on the floor.
This close, Jamie can tell that the ‘coffee’ scent is actually ‘Coffee burning
on the heating element.’
Jamie smiles and leans against the island, waiting for Tyler to notice him.
Marshall sees him first, and trots over to lick him good-morning. Tyler catches
her out of the corner of his eye, does a double-take and startle when he sees
Jamie just standing there.
“Shit, fuck, son of a…The fucking thing just gushed coffee everywhere but into
the pot,” Tyler complains, his face pale and his ears almost as pink as his
hair.
“It’s the filter,” Jamie says. “It did it to me the first time I tried using it
too. There’s a little thing you have to flip down.” He puts Marshall in her
crate because caffeine isn’t so good for dogs and he’s scared she’ll lick the
coffee up. Then he gets a second roll of paper towels out of the cabinet, and
together they work on mopping up the mess. He looks up halfway through the job,
and Tyler has stopped wiping, and is leaning back and watching Jamie like he’s
something worth looking at that way.
“Um, what?” he asks, and Tyler smirks.
“You’re the only one who gets to stare?”
Jamie shakes his head. “Don’t do that, okay? Please?”
Tyler’s smile falters to a puzzled frown.
“The hell did I do?” There’s a tinge of anger in the tone, and Jamie feels
guilty.
Words slip through Jamie’s head too quick for him to grab hold of. His chest
feels tight, wrong. “Just. You can’t tease, okay. You have to stop—doing
whatever the hell you’re doing.”
Tyler crosses his arms over his chest, and tips his head, considering. Jamie
feels naked, and he turns back to scrubbing the counter to distract himself.
“You are gay,” Tyler says, matter-of-fact. “The way you’re always looking at me
with your…” he makes a gesture that encompasses Jamie from head to crotch
“…eyes,” he finishes.
Jamie sucks his lower lip in, bites down and then lets go. “Yeah,” he agrees,
because that much he can’t deny.
“But not out,” Tyler adds. “To anyone?”
Jamie shakes his head.
“Wow,” Tyler says. “I’m the first. That’s big, huh?”
Jamie shudders and nods again. It feels like a relief though. Like a weight
slipping from him to say it.
“Hey, sit down,” Tyler says, and Jamie realizes he’s feeling a little light-
headed. He sits and Tyler gets him a glass of water and gives him a minute to
drink.
“Have you ever?” Tyler asks, when Jamie’s done. He licks his lower lip, and
Jamie can’t help watching the pink tip of his tongue. “Is that why you ran that
night? You don’t have to be embarrassed. Everybody has a first time, yeah?”
“It…” Jamie’s face feels hot, “I don’t like it. How I look. Naked. I didn’t
want to see you get turned off. Looking at it.”
Tyler frowns, deeper now. “Somebody told you you’ve got an ugly dick?”
Jamie chokes on a laugh. “It’s not like porn. All of me. I get the job done,
but there’s nothing good to look at,” he says, and Tyler snorts, then sighs
long-suffering.
“Jamie, okay. Here’s the thing. I’ve seen a lot of dick, and I gotta tell you,
dicks are pretty universally hilarious.”
The corner of Jamie’s lips twitch, at the ridiculousness of the conversation,
at Tyler’s attempt at sage wisdom.
“Seriously,” Tyler protests. “Look.” And he flicks the button open on his pants
and pulls the zipper straight down, no art to it at all, like he’s standing at
a urinal as he whips it out. All Jamie’s training to not-look clashes against
how much he wants to look and he nearly chokes.
“Look,” Tyler repeats. “It’s just a floppy skin-bag over a bunch of veins. Big
dicks, little dicks, fat, skinny. You’re not trans, but even if you were, it’s
still just a dick.”
Jamie is blushing so hard he thinks he might blow a blood-vessel, but he looks,
and yeah. It’s like the locker-room, Tyler’s flaccid cock hanging there, the
foreskin completely enveloping the head, the shaft sloping slightly to the
left. He can get what Tyler’s saying, just applying it to himself, his body, is
a leap.
“The thing about dicks,” Tyler says, and wraps his hand around himself, “Is
that they feel good, and watching somebody feel good is really fucking sexy.”
His breath catches and instantly the moment shifts from clinical to erotic. He
smiles at Jamie, slow and aroused.
“I wanna see you feel good,” Tyler says, “Come on, why can’t we feel good
together?”
Being around Tyler makes him a little wild, a little daring. He swallows hard
and stands up, fumbles his sweatpants down, wraps his hand around the thick
chunk of dick and pulls it out.
Tyler’s eyes go wide. “Holy shit!” he says, and Jamie goes to stuff himself
back in his pants.
“No, no, wait, hey,” Tyler says, and grabs Jamie’s wrist, the first time he’s
been the one to initiate physical contact between them. Jamie looks up at him,
and feels like he’s out on the ice at a major tournament without helmet,
without pads. Vulnerable and fragile and Tyler’s expression softens.
“There is nothing wrong with that dick,” he says, firm, and slides his other
hand around over Jamie’s, squeezes his grip a little tighter. He draws Jamie’s
wrist back until it’s only Tyler’s hand on Jamie’s meat, cradling it in his
palm. Jamie shivers again, at having another guy touching him, Tyler’s grip
light and almost clinical again.
“Girls let you put this in them?” Tyler asks, and Jamie sways towards him.
“Sometimes,” he admits. He can’t find much sexy about the memories of those
occasions.
“This is a lot of dick for ass-fucking,” Tyler says, like he’s just explaining
the mechanics of it. “I’m not really into that anyway. But blowjobs? Big and
thick in my mouth and I can still take you all the way down? Oh hell yeah.” His
hand starts slowly stroking Jamie, and he leans in, chest to chest. Jamie feels
Tyler’s cock bump against his and nerves fire through him like lightning.
He’s still holding one of Jamie’s wrists, and Jamie’s other hand finds its way
to Tyler’s hip, slides up under the shirt at his waist.
“Oh shit, oh baby,” Tyler breathes against his neck. The tickle of moist breath
against his skin is all it takes, and he thrusts into Tyler’s grip, twice, and
comes on the kitchen floor.
“There we go,” Tyler says, and Jamie isn’t sure if he’s being made fun of, but
he can’t quite care at the moment. He goes to sit down on the stool again and
mostly misses. Tyler catches him, surprisingly strong, and lowers him down to
the hardwood floor, and Jamie’s eyes are drawn to Tyler’s dick, hard and eager
now, standing out of his underwear pointing at Jamie’s face.
“Please,” Jamie begs, not even sure what he’s asking for.
“I gotcha,” Tyler assures him, and wraps a hand around his own cock and starts
to stroke himself, inches from Jamie’s face. The first spatter of come makes
Jamie jerk, the sudden heat of it and how it cools almost instantly, the smell,
heavy and bitter.
Tyler locks his knees and leans on his elbow on the bar, head bowed as he
catches his breath. He reaches out his other hand, touches where his jizz
decorates Jamie’s skin. He huffs out a broken chuckle, and Jamie smiles up at
him. He still can barely believe he was that brave, that reckless.
“Yeah?” Tyler asks, and the question encompasses everything.
“Yeah,” Jamie agrees.
 
=====================
Jamie sits on the floor of his kitchen and tries to regather his breath and
wits while Tyler tucks himself back in his pants. Tyler hands him down a paper
towel, and he gets most of the come off his face with the dry one, and when
he’s done Tyler is ready with a wet one to hand him. He never thought about how
clingy the stuff is, how hard to get out of the shadow of his beard.
“You okay?” Tyler asks, easy like he expects the answer to be yes.
“Yeah,” Jamie says, and Tyler offers his hand down to help pull him to his
feet. Tyler turns back to the coffee mess like they didn’t just exchange
orgasms in Jamie’s kitchen. Jamie feels like he’s a stride behind the action,
struggling to catch up.
“Show me how to work this thing?” Tyler asks, gesturing at the coffee machine.
Jamie comes over and joins him beside it, shows him how the filter-holder
latches on, how the removable piece sets down between two pegs. A few minutes
later, they have rich dark coffee brewing into the pot instead of over the
counter, the kitchen cleaned up and Marshall back out of her crate. They both
take (separate) showers, and take their time drinking the coffee that was so
much damn work.
True to his word the night before, Jamie ‘makes’ Tyler do Marshall’s medicine,
the syringe of goop that she tries to shake out of her mouth, the drops in her
ears, the ointment on her bare patches of fur. It’s nice to not be the bad guy
for a change.
“Hey, I was wondering if you could give me a ride,” Tyler asks when they’re
done.
“Now?” Jamie asks, off-balance again. He had come up with a thought as he was
going to sleep the night before, but expected to have more time to find a way
to bring it up. The sex had really derailed his game-plan. “Or we could have
lunch first.”
Tyler considers for just a second, and then shrugs. “Sure.”
Jamie smiles. “You want to recommend somewhere? Good food. Nothing too stuffy.”
“Burgers okay? I know a place with ambiance.”
Jamie wonders when giving in to Tyler won’t feel like he’s taking his own life
in his hands. “Sure.”
The place is definitely not ‘stuffy.’ It’s back down in Deep Ellum, the whole
strip dark and dingy looking by the light of the sun. The sign is broken neon
over black spray-painted plywood, and Jamie can’t read it, but Tyler goes to
the door like he’s not surprised at all.
It smells good inside, burgers and fries and beer. It’s the kind of place that
can’t decide if it’s a bar (eight stools and room for a single bartender), a
restaurant (three tables, a window to the kitchen), or a pool hall (just one
green-felted table along the side).
Jamie…kind of likes it. They place their orders at the counter. Tyler checks
that Jamie’s paying before he says what he wants and Jamie can’t help but
wonder how much difference that makes.
They take a seat to wait, and Jamie tries not to rock his chair on the one
short leg.
“I have a proposal,” he says, and Tyler leers at him. Does this thing with his
eyebrows. Heat rises along Jamie’s jaw and up his cheeks. His ears burn.
“Not like that!” he protests. Tyler tones it down a little, at least, and Jamie
takes the chance he’s been given to get his words out.
“I’ve got a work-thing next week. I’ll be staying in a hotel out in Fort
Worth.”
The burgers come, each one broader than Jamie’s spread hand, thumb-tip to
finger-tip, dripping with bacon and cheese. Tyler digs in, but his eyes flick
up to Jamie to show he’s still listening.
“I checked with a kennel about boarding Marshall, but she was too sick last
week to get her vaccinations, and they need to have at least a week to ‘take’
before they’ll let her be around other people’s dogs.”
Tyler blinks like he has no idea what this has to do with him.
“I dunno what your week looks like, but I’d like to pay you to dog-sit.”
“How long?” Tyler asks, and it’s not a no.
“Five days, four nights. I can give you a key and a clicker to the apartment.
I’ll pre-pay the vet in case you need to take Marshall there for anything, and
you can have whatever you want out of the kitchen.”
“Yeah, is it…” Whatever Tyler was going to ask, he loses or decides against
that train of thought. “I can take her with me, yeah? Like if I’m going out?”
It’s kind of an odd question, but Jamie shrugs. “Just take her food with you.
No people food.”
Tyler nods then. “Yeah, I can do it. It’s no big deal.” He finishes off his
burger while Jamie’s just halfway done, leans back and looks around the place.
“You play?” he asks, nodding over to the pool table. Jamie shrugs.
“A couple times.” He usually gets some balls in some pockets. Mostly he plays
while he’s drinking, but that’s still several months or a dishonest bartender
away, here in Dallas.
“You wanna?” Tyler asks with a guileless smile, and it’s not like Jamie has
anything better to do.
“I’ll give you first break,” Tyler promises, and goes to the bar to ask for the
balls, chats with the bartender for a couple seconds. He racks them up while
Jamie eats the last of his lunch, sights down the four pool cues in the rack
and picks the one he likes. Jamie wipes his hands on his jeans and joins Tyler
at the table.
Then Tyler digs a crumpled five out of his pocket, pops it flat for Jamie to
see and puts it on the top of the lampshade over the table.
Gambling with a kid who doesn’t seem to have much disposable income seems kind
of like a dick move to Jamie, but Tyler started it so he must be willing to
risk it. Jamie digs out his own bill and puts it up there, then chooses a
stick.
The break feels good, one stripe going in and the balls scattering nicely. He
takes two more shots and pockets two more balls before a miss leaves it Tyler’s
turn.
Tyler walks around the table, eyes flicking to different solids and back to the
cue. “You didn’t leave me much, did you?” he complains, but he lines up his
shot and his ball falls clean.
They go around a few times. In the end, Tyler pockets his last two solids and
then the eight with precise, economical strokes.
“Again?” Tyler asks, and Jamie digs out a ten to put up with the money on the
light.
“Am I being conned?” Jamie asks as Tyler’s break leaves him absolutely nothing.
Tyler shrugs, and a grin plays around the corners of his mouth.
“So where does a boy from Canada, living in Texas, get so good at pool?” Jamie
asks.
Tyler takes two more shots, and Jamie wonders if he’s pretending he didn’t hear
when he starts talking.
“So the first winter I wasn’t living with my parents anymore, I was at this
teen shelter up in Toronto. I guess it wasn’t really shitty, but they had
like—no special areas for queer kids, right? Just me and this boy named Davey,
who was the only one who’d share a room with a faggot. No lock on the door, no
adults in the halls most of the time. But there was a common room, right by the
administrator’s office, and there was a pool table there.”
Jamie—he feels like he’s trying to remember every word, to collect all the
pieces of a puzzle. The first winter, so there was more than one, and what the
hell does not living with his parents mean?
“So we’d play, something to pass the time and keep us where the monitors were.
Winner stays, so the better I was, the more I got to play, and the worse I was,
the more I had to sit back and watch. The more time I had to run my mouth and
say something that would get my ass kicked.”
Some guys come in as Tyler’s about to beat Jamie again, camouflage t-shirts
over big beer bellies, and Jamie hears some muttered “Look at that hair” and
“What the fuck, is that a dude?” Tyler plays deaf, so Jamie doesn’t start a
fuss. The guys order beers and sit at the bar and watch the play as Tyler beats
Jamie a third time. They rack again and Tyler breaks.
“Hey,” one of the guys calls, “You gonna hog the table all day?”
“You wanna play winner?” Tyler says, acknowledging them for the first time. He
nods to the cash on the light. “It’ll be eighty bucks.”
“Yeah. I’m in,” the guy says, and goes to the ATM by the restrooms. Jamie has a
bad feeling about his confidence level. Men like that make shitty winners and
even worse losers.
“So how’d it end?” Jamie asks, mostly to keep Tyler from taunting his future
opponent.
Tyler sighs and starts to run the table, all his balls and then all of Jamie’s,
one after another, mechanical, calling each shot before he takes it. He starts
racking the balls and the two guys have a quick debate amongst themselves. The
taller of the two comes over and Jamie takes a step back.
“So Davey was cute, right? I had like this high school crush, but he was
straight, so it was all one-sided. Anyway, these assholes at the shelter were
always after him. Like calling him gay because he was friends with me and
trying to grab him and stuff.”
The opponent gives Tyler a sideways look of disgust and takes the break,
competent but not impressive, in Jamie’s non-expert opinion.
“I tried to keep him with me, or in the common rooms, but there was this girl
he liked, and he kept trying to get with her, and they cornered him.”
“Jesus Christ!” complains Tyler’s opponent, “Shut the hell up!”
Tyler snorts. “Give me a game worth paying attention to then.” He turns back to
Jamie, even as he leans over the board to take his next shot. “They beat the
shit out of him, and the girl didn’t seem to care, and he opened his wrists in
the shower.” His ball falls, and he never breaks eye contact with Jamie.
“Are we playing or talking?”
Tyler sighs like this guy is just too dumb for life, and Jamie thinks he
probably is. The next few shots are like something out of a trick-shot video.
Bouncing the cue-ball, curving it around other balls, two and three balls
pocketed with each shot. Tyler calls the eight and the second guy picks it up
off the table as it’s rolling in.
“Time to go,” Tyler says, and grabs his money off the light. He steps in front
of Jamie, shifts his grip on the pool cue so the heavy end is forward, and nods
Jamie back towards the bar instead of at the front door.
Jamie goes where Tyler tells him to, and the guys follow. Just about the time
Jamie thinks he needs to pull Tyler behind him and get ready to throw down,
there’s a sharp “Hey!” from the bartender. Everybody but Tyler looks over, and
the bartender has traded a bar-towel for a double-barreled, sawed-off shotgun.
It’s currently pointed at the ceiling.
“You leave those boys alone,” he tells the rednecks. He pushes two beers
towards the edge of the bar. “You can sit, and drink, and try to be less
stupid, or I can get the feeling you’re trying to rob me and shoot you in the
face.”
The duo takes the third option and they scramble for the door. Tyler relaxes
and puts the cue on the bar, takes one of the bottles and takes a hefty
swallow, and hell, Jamie could use the drink so he takes the other one.
“Thanks, Ray,” Tyler says, and peels a twenty off his winnings and lays it on
the counter. Jamie gives the bartender a heartfelt nod of thanks, and then
Tyler grabs his wrist and drags him out a back door that leads off the bathroom
hall.
The sun is painfully bright after the dim interior of the bar, and Jamie
stumbles blind for a few steps. The near-noon heat is like a furnace, and Jamie
feels like his pale Canadian skin is crisping and shrinking in the dry bake of
it.
“Tyler,” Jamie says as he catches up to him by the truck. Tyler is looking
around like he expects trouble to follow them out, but the guys are nowhere in
sight. It’s just sinking in, that they were about to get their asses kicked in
there, that that was a real fucking gun. Jamie is half-drunk on adrenaline, and
all he can think about is Tyler, younger than he is now by at least two years,
in a place so bad Jamie can barely imagine it. “Tyler, Davey…what happened to
him?”
Tyler shakes his head and looks away. “I dunno. He was breathing when the
ambulance came, but I couldn’t stand to be there anymore. Grabbed my shit and
left. Hooked up with these Americans on vacation. I was in Boston the next time
I was anything like sober.”
Jamie wipes at his mouth, feels like he might be sick. It’s over, past, and
Tyler lived through it. He’s here, strong and healthy, live and in Technicolor.
“What are you doing now?” Jamie asks, “Where are you staying?”
Tyler gives him a wry smile. “Nah, Jamie, don’t do that. I’m good now.”
Jamie unlocks the truck and Tyler climbs in, checks that his backpack is still
safe under the seat. He peels a couple bills out of his winnings and stuffs
them in an inside pocket and hands Jamie the rest.
“For Marshall. Her vet and food and stuff.”
“You don’t…” Jamie starts to say, but Tyler cuts him off.
“No, really. I…I know I fucked up. I just. I want her to be partly my dog
still. If I can. You don’t have to pay me to watch my own damn dog, you know.”
Jamie hesitates because he doesn’t need the money back, doesn’t want it. Tyler
shakes the money at him and Jamie refusing it, or insisting on paying him for
the dog-sitting will make him more stubborn or worse, feel like he’s unwelcome
to the only tie Jamie has to keep him close, keep him safe.
“If that’s the way you want it.” He takes forty bucks and passes the rest back.
“This’ll cover your half of the vet stuff.” He’s not usually a good liar, but
he needs this one, and apparently Tyler wants to believe him, because he nods.
==============
 
Tyler asks to be dropped off not far from Jamie’s place, maybe four miles
northeast at a steakhouse parking lot. He doesn’t go into the restaurant
though, cuts through the landscaping and on to whatever is on the other side.
Jamie could circle around, see where Tyler went, but he turns back for home
instead. If Tyler wanted him to see, he’d have told Jamie to take him closer.
He goes back to his apartment, conscious of the security systems, the safety of
it all. Ice-cold air-conditioning and a kitchen full of food. He lets Marshall
out of her crate and snaps a leash on her. She wags the entire back-half of her
body in excitement, already knowing what the leash means. He grabs a poop-bag
and takes her down to the little park nearby, carrying her over the cement
sidewalks so her paws don’t burn. He lets her down and stands in the sweltering
heat as she does her business and sniffs around.
He makes it back upstairs with her, and then he breaks down, phone in hand and
Jordie’s number dialed before he’s really thought about it.
“Jamie! How’s Dallas?” Jordie answers, the sound of guys talking, cheering,
arguing behind his voice. Probably a video-game tournament, if Jamie guesses
right.
“Hey. You got a minute?” Jamie asks, and Jordie is quiet.
“Keep it down you guys,” Jordie says, muffled by his hand on the phone. Jamie
hears a door close, can picture Jordie going out to his patio.
“Jamie. You okay?” Jordie asks, and things feel just a little better.
“I. Yeah. I guess.”
“Jamie,” Jordie says, big-brother voice in full effect.
Jamie sighs. “Do you think there’s anything we could have done that our parents
would have kicked us out of the house for?”
“What?”
Jamie knows he’s not making a lot of sense.
“I just don’t get it. Why a parent would do that. How they even could…”
Jordie breathes with him for a long time and Jamie starts to unwind.
“I don’t think there’s anything that either of us is capable of that would get
us disowned,” Jordie assures him. “Did you…Jamie, is there something you want
to tell me?”
And that’s not even why Jamie called, not what was on his mind at all, but
suddenly the words are pushing against his chest, desperate to be out, now,
before he lies to Jordie and has to start a conversation just like this at some
later date.
“I’m gay,” Jamie says, sags with relief just to have the thing said.
“It’s okay,” Jordie says, without hesitation. “I know, kid. It’s okay, Jamie.
It’s okay.”
“Mom and Dad, Jennifer…” Jamie starts, but can’t find the end of the sentence.
“They’ll get it. Maybe not be happy, because it’s not gonna make anything
easier for you. But they’ll still love you, Jamie. Nobody’s getting rid of you.
You know that.”
“Tyler. His parents…I dunno. I dunno if that’s why, but he’s not with them
anymore. He’s out on his own. Has been a while.”
“Is this the kid that left the puppy in your lap?”
“Yeah.”
“Jamie.” Jordie’s voice is gentle, but warning, “Jamie, you’ve got a lot going
on right now. You have to be careful, you get that, right? You have to be
smart.”
“I know. I’ll try. I promise I’ll try.”
Jamie is right there, on the cusp of something amazing. The last thing he needs
is some thrown-away kid and a sickly mutt.
He knows, already, that it’ll take more than brotherly advice to make him leave
them behind.
Jordie must sense it, because he doesn’t even make the suggestion.
=======================
Tyler has Jamie drop him off at the Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse that’s in front of
the Cathedral of Hope. He’s not sure what Jamie’s relationship with religion
has been, and some guys take it weird, that Tyler will get off with them and
then go to church. It doesn’t always seem to help that it’s a gay church, and
some guys have a really fucked up hate-on for God. Like they think Tyler is
going there to talk to God about them behind their back or something. He’s
learned not to even take the chance.
So he tells Jamie “Here,” and Jamie pulls over.
“When should I come by, get the key and stuff?” he asks, his door half-open,
backpack strap in his hand. He thinks maybe he could have talked Jamie into
letting him stay the three nights until Jamie’s trip starts, but the kind of
interest Tyler can generate never lasts forever. He’d rather not lean too
heavily on Jamie’s generosity and not wear his welcome out too soon.
“Tuesday?” Jamie offers, and Tyler nods.
“I’ll catch up with you then,” he says. He texted himself from Jamie’s phone,
the second time he used it. He’s already planning his backup plan for where to
charge up if everything goes to shit in the next few days. The money from the
pool table is a nice cushion though, and should see him through.
He’s hitting church well after the eleven o’clock service is done. Mostly-empty
parking lot and not a lot of people hanging around. There’s an AlaTeen meeting
at one. It’s not really something he thinks he needs, but there’s usually
pastries and soda, cans he can take-with. While he’s around, the actual food
pantry sometimes has stuff he can have that doesn’t need to be cooked, so he’ll
stop by there.
He walks into the meeting just as the short-haired girl up front is saying,
“I’m Ashleigh, and my parents are alcoholics.” He had thought she was up in
Frisco with her dad, and it’s awesome to see her here.
He sits in the back row and hangs out while she talks about her dad getting
picked up driving drunk and getting sent back to live with her mom for a while,
how her mom keeps trying to put her in dresses and take her to Macy’s for a
makeover. How fucking close she is to college and these people with control
over her life keep trying to drag her down, deny who she is.
When she’s done, she comes over and sits in the seat next to Tyler, lays her
head on his shoulder.
“Hey, you want company?” he whispers to her as the next kid goes up. “We can
hit the gym later today or tomorrow?” The one at her house is pretty expansive,
and she pays for him by-the-day to be a guest at Telos when she’s in the mood
to work out there instead.
“Sounds awesome,” she whispers back, and closes her eyes.
They sit through the rest of the meeting, and then she drives them in her
Mercedes, to get lunch from a taco truck and then back to her mom’s place in
University Park. The homes down there make Jamie’s awesome apartment look small
and shabby, fifty-million-dollar faux-Spanish mansions with great old oak trees
in the front yard and huge swimming pools in the back.
They go in, and her mom isn’t there. They hang out and raid the fridge and the
liquor cabinet. Tyler’s not chasing that black-out level of drunk these days,
but he likes getting loose, getting tipsy and soft around the edges.
“Wanna watch porn?” Ashleigh asks, and he’s not sure what interest they could
have in common, but he shrugs.
She leads him into the media room and pulls up pretty boys fucking each other
on the massive television. He sits on the sectional and she settles against
him. The boys are kind of skinny for his taste, willowy and hairless. He’s seen
enough of thin bodies, from hunger or drugs, that he has to not think about it
too much. But hey, fucking, so it’s not like he can’t get past it.
Ashleigh puts her hands down her pants and shrugs when he looks over. “You too,
if you want.” It’s not like he sees enough porn that he’s gonna waste it, and
she seems vaguely interested in seeing him jerk off, so he does.
She’s still busy after he’s finished himself off, gone to clean up and come
back. Her knees are spread and her lips parted, eyes half-lidded watching the
screen.
“Need a hand?” Tyler asks, flicks his tongue out over his lower lip. He knows
she’s into girls, but hey, a mouth is a mouth. She must see it that way too,
because she wriggles out of her pants and panties and makes room for him
between her legs.
He’s just slipping to his knees, contemplating the challenge but not really
aroused by the sight in front of him, when they hear the stumbling click of
heels on the granite tile of the hall, a woman’s voice calling “Ashleigh? Baby
are you home?”
Tyler jerks back but not quick enough, Ashleigh’s mom there staring open-
mouthed at them, and he’s going to jail oh shit, he’s fucked.
“Oh!” she says, surprised, eyes taking in her daughter half-naked and Tyler
there with his pink hair and the porn still bigger than life on the screen. And
then “Oh! Oh, I’m sorry!” Pleased and flustered and at least as drunk as they
are at four in the afternoon. “No, you just…” she flutters her hands around in
encouragement.
Ashleigh groans as her mom runs away and Tyler stares in open-mouthed shock.
“Fuck,” Ashleigh sighs, covers her eyes in the crook of her elbow. “Now she’ll
be back to thinking I like girls to punish her.”
“Sorry,” Tyler says. “Does this mean I can’t stay the night?”
Ashleigh shakes her head. “Probably better not to. Hey, you need cash for a
hotel or something?”
Tyler shrugs. “I wouldn’t turn it down if you’re offering.”
===============
Ashleigh slips him just short of a hundred dollars and Tyler gives her a hug
for the strength to deal with the train-wreck of a parent waiting for her
inside. He has to get a cab, because there’s just not the kind of opportunity
around her neighborhood that he can work with.
He goes back up to Oak Lawn. It’s early in the day, and he’s thinking about the
cash he has on hand now. It’s mid-summer, but he’s been out of the house long
enough to be thinking of winter. Dallas doesn’t get as cold as Boston, not
nearly as cold as Toronto. Still, it’s a hard time of year to work. Getting
around town is harder. People get busy with the holidays and their own
families. Winter is— dangerous. A few bad nights and he’s sleeping outdoors. A
few more and he looks like the kind of boy who sleeps outdoors, and nobody
wants a boy like that in their home, in their bed.
He thinks, in the cab, about California, where the sun always shines. San
Antonio, Austin even, would be closer, warm and attainable. Having travel money
would make it easier to find a ride, if he could chip in for gas, buy his own
food. If he can find somewhere free to sleep for the next couple of days,
Ashleigh’s money will be a damn good start on a nest egg.
He thinks of Jamie, his shy smile and Marshall’s soft fur. That’s a hope, not a
promise, and Tyler isn’t sure if he can afford to trust in it.
He gets out of the cab and pays the driver and waits for his change. He’s not
really hungry, but it’s hot and the clubs don’t open for hours so he heads to
Hunky’s for a shake or something.
Dion and Eduardo are there in the back booth, shoulders touching as they share
a plate of fries. Tyler orders a slice of cake that’s the size of his head and
three forks, play-flirts with the guy at the register while he puts it on the
plate. He carries it over and slides into the other side of the bench. Eduardo
looks up, startled, and Dion puffs up defensively before he sees who it is.
Tyler scoots the cake to the center of the table and grins.
“Caught a good day,” he says, and Eduardo raises his eyebrows and reaches for
the silverware.
“Yeah?”
Tyler nods. He gets it, that as shitty as things are for him sometimes, he’s
got advantages he can make work for him. His pretty face and rockin’ body,
having a skin color that makes him more attractive to people like Ashleigh,
more “accessible.” It makes it a lot easier that he’s not so fucking in love
with someone that he’d rather sleep on the street with them than in some one
night stand’s bed without. Sometimes Dion’s little brother will let them into
the house for a shower or something while their dad’s at work, but they don’t
have any regular places to go, nobody they can count on besides each other.
Tyler will start saving for winter soon. He will. Just…not today.
“I’ve got money for a room, you guys want to crash with me?”
The only answer to that is “Hey. Yeah, sure. Thanks.” And they take their time
eating, because they all know where they’re ending up and it’s out of the
weather but it’s not exactly the Renaissance Hotel.
Eduardo has an over-21 driver’s license that sort of looks like him. Tyler and
Dion wait around the corner from the liquor store while he goes in and buys a
box of wine to take back with them.
“Uh, want some privacy?” Tyler asks after Eduardo has haggled with the front
desk clerk for the best price for two days. They glance at each other, a quick
smile for this small luxury and he’ll take that as a yes.
“Enjoy,” he says, “I’m just gonna…” he gestures vaguely around and passes Dion
the key. And then he walks, aching with envy. Not about the getting off part,
because he gets sex, and it’s not anything really special. But about the way
they look at each other, the way they smile. The way they’re loving each other
through this life and if they don’t make it through to thirty, twenty-five,
twenty even, Tyler will still envy them having something he’s never touched.
They spend the next two days chasing the channels on the room’s tv’s rabbit ear
antenna, drinking cheap wine and reading coverless magazines that Dion digs out
of the bookstore dumpster. It’s quiet and good, even when Tyler goes walking
again to give them the room.
Tuesday comes and the money is just about gone anyway.
Tyler charges his phone and sends a text to Jamie.
 
================
It’s not that Jamie doesn’t watch porn or like porn. It’s just that he has
always had to be so careful before, a full team of immature assholes crashing
through his apartment with mixed amounts of warning at all hours of the day.
So it takes him a while to find that site that has gay stuff and doesn’t
require a credit card to get in. He’s probably ruining this laptop with
viruses, but it was time for an upgrade anyway.
He usually finds the first video of two guys sucking each other off, or maybe
hand jobs, and once in a while fucking. Most of the guys he sees look more like
Tyler than himself, lean and long and muscular. Sometimes they’re bulkier,
broad and built like they’ve had too much time in the gym and not enough doing
something real. He’ll jerk off quick and delete the browser history, close the
computer and that will be it.
This is the first time he’s had something to look for, a fantasy he wanted to
find. He types punk in the search bar and looks down the page of thumbnails,
reads over the titles. His stomach feels tight with nerves, like he’s breaking
the rules to look for someone who looks like Tyler. There’s a boy with green
hair in one of the images, short and spiky all over. Too thin though, and the
title is “little punk fucked hard” and that really…isn’t what Jamie is looking
for.
He’s on the third page of results before he finds something that looks right,
something that isn’t the opposite of good, five seconds in.
The title is “Punks in love” and he almost doesn’t click it because the image
is so grainy, the lighting so rough. He does though, and one of the boys has a
platinum blond Mohawk, the other buzzed-short black hair. This, this is what he
was looking for, as they smile and kiss like they mean it, as Blondie tips his
head back and Buzz nuzzles his throat, breathing him in like they’ve been apart
too long.
Jamie looks around his room, still not used to the privacy, the isolation, of
his life in Dallas. But he’s alone, of course he is, and nobody will see if he
pulls down the waistband of his sweatpants, if he takes his dick in hand. It’s
not like theirs, the performers; it’s thick and short but maybe, maybe that
doesn’t matter as much as he thought it did. It works and it feels good and he
remembers Tyler’s breath on his neck as he watches Blondie kissing his way down
Buzz’s stomach. Blondie must tickle, because Buzz laughs, making his waistline
jiggle a bit.
He strokes himself as Blondie goes down on Buzz, tugs his foreskin between
finger and thumb, pinches a little to give himself a little more time, to make
this last.
The camera the boys are using is stationary, so there’s no zoom in on the act
as Blondie sucks him off, but it shows the adoring way Buzz looks down at him,
the awe and love and Jamie comes hard enough to spatter the keyboard, groaning
and struggling to catch his breath in the afternoon sun filtering through his
blinds.
Usually he turns off the porn as soon after as he can, but this time he watches
through to the end, as Blondie starts fingering Buzz with lube, doing something
that makes Buzz’s breath hitch and swear words slip from his lips. Blondie goes
slow, lining himself up and pressing in gentle. He asks something, but the
microphone isn’t good enough to catch what, and Buzz nods, encouraging.
Jamie’s halfway to hard again as they fuck, a slow rolling wave that builds
speed, builds force until Buzz is folded in two, red-faced and gasping, Blondie
cursing like the profanity fuels the strength of his hips.
Jamie is thinking, more than idly, about coming again when his phone chirps on
the nightstand. He feels his face flush, even knowing that whoever sent him a
text can’t know what he’s doing (unless it’s Jennifer—she always knows when
he’s doing something embarrassing). He fumbles to pause the video and grabs his
phone.
When should I meet you? is the text on the screen, from a number that’s not in
his contacts.
To get the key
This is Tyler
And where
Jamie smiles, that there’s someone worse at texting than he is.
Whenever he texts back, and I can pick you up if you need a ride
Tyler sends him back a smiley and an address.
On my way in 10 Jamie sends back. He saves Tyler’s number in his phone and the
link to Punks in Love on his computer, cleans up himself and the keyboard as
best he can.
He snaps a leash on Marshall and picks up his keys and as he’s locking the door
behind him he has a moment when he’s actually startled by how excited he is,
how happy. He’s on his way to see Tyler, and Tyler…makes him feel good.
He takes Marshall down and lets her do her business before going back up the
elevator to get his truck from the garage—it only took one time cleaning piss
out of his seats to learn not to let a puppy with a full bladder into his
vehicle. Then he goes to pick up Tyler, following his phone’s directions.
Dallas does another of those things where the neighborhood goes from bright and
classy to downright scary at the turn of a few blocks.
He pulls up outside a courtyard style motel, maybe apartments, probably built
in the 60’s, all cinder-block walls and sagging roof. There’s no sign out
front, unless Jamie counts a sheet of plywood leaning against the office wall
with ‘vacacy’ written in spray paint.
here Jamie texts, and Marshall tries to get her little paws up on the window
edge to see out. Jamie hopes, he hopes that Tyler sends him back a string of
question marks, that he’s in the wrong place, a typo, something.
Then one of the peeling doors opens and Tyler comes out, walking backwards to
talk to the dark-skinned boy he’s leaving behind, backpack on his shoulder and
a bright smile on his lips.
He gets to the truck door and Jamie grabs Marshall’s leash so she doesn’t fall
out when Tyler opens it.
“Baby!” Tyler calls and holds his hands out and Jamie gives her the slack to go
to him. “Who’s my good girl? Marshall!”
He looks up at Jamie, turns the full force of that smile at him. “Hey, are you
in a rush? Could I go show her to the guys?” He’s moving a little loose, a
little off-center, and Jamie wonders if he’s been drinking in the early
afternoon.
Jamie shrugs. He doesn’t have anywhere to be, but he’s not looking forward to
waiting in this parking lot. Tyler must read it, because he tips his head.
“Come on in. Meet my friends.”
Jamie wants to do that even less. He has no reason to think the inside of this
place is any better than the outside, and he doesn’t want to think of Tyler
here, even if it’s just to visit people. He’s afraid he’ll see evidence Tyler
slept here, in a place that seems so unsafe. “You could bring her tomorrow,
when you’re dog sitting,” he says, and the light goes dim in Tyler’s eyes. He
nods though, shrugs easy.
“Yeah, okay.” He climbs up in the truck and settles Marshall on his lap. “I’m
just not sure where they’ll be then.”
Jamie feels like the biggest asshole that’s ever assed. “No, I’m sorry. I—I
didn’t want to intrude. We can go in.”
Tyler gives him a smile then, honest and a little surprised and so pleased. So
Jamie locks up the truck and follows Tyler back to the motel room. The layers
of wood laminate are peeling from the door and the number 3 is written on with
a marker.
Tyler raps once with his knuckles, calls “You better not be fucking again, it’s
only been two minutes!” before he turns the knob.
There are two boys inside, one Jamie just saw, tall, skinny and black, the
other short, skinny and Hispanic, standing by the bed and packing their bags.
And Jamie has slept in some rank motels with the Rockets and before that. And
this is…horrifying, even by hockey playing teenage boy standards, the carpet
brown and matted, the walls stained and smelling of mildew. There’s a heavy
odor that Jamie is hoping isn’t the bathroom, though he suspects it is. The air
conditioner rattles and whines and he can’t imagine anyone sleeping well here.
“Oh my god! Is this your girl?” The shorter boy rushes to take Marshall from
Tyler, cooing over her and rubbing her belly. The taller boy rolls his eyes
Jamie’s way, commiserating, like their boyfriends are ridiculous. Jamie’s mouth
twitches, a smile threatening at the idea-- Tyler, his boyfriend. Jamie would
indulge him every stupid thing he wants, do everything humanly possible to keep
him happy.
“Dion, Eduardo, Jamie. Jamie, Eduardo, Dion,” Tyler introduces, and Dion looks
over Eduardo’s shoulder.
“She ain’t that cute,” he mutters, and Eduardo frowns.
“Didn’t say I wanted one.”
“But you do.”
Eduardo shrugs and doesn’t deny it.
“Hey, I just…wanted you to meet her,” Tyler says as he takes Marshall back.
Jamie can tell he’s sorry he brought her in, sorry he sowed this discord.
“No,” Dion says. “It’s cool. We gotta get outta here though.”
Tyler nods and cuddles Marshall to his chest. “You guys keep safe, yeah?” They
both hug Tyler, even though they must have said goodbye to him ten minutes ago.
Jamie steps back and holds the door, grateful for the clean heat of the sun.
“Where are they going?” he asks Tyler after the door closes behind him, quiet.
Tyler shrugs. “I dunno. Somewhere else.” He doesn’t seem happy for them.
“Somewhere worse?” Jamie guesses.
Tyler looks away. “I’m tapped, man.”
Jamie isn’t sure if he’s being played, but seriously. It doesn’t cost him
anything to err on the side of kindness, nothing important at least. He reaches
for his back pocket and Tyler’s eyes go wide.
“Shit, don’t pull that out here,” he says, even though there’s nobody else out
in the sweltering heat. Jamie goes to the truck and unlocks it, opens Tyler’s
side too. He gets the AC running because Jesus, Texas is not fucking around
with this heat, and then he goes for his wallet. There’s only sixty bucks
there, but he passes it to Tyler.
“How long will this get them?”
Tyler shrugs. “Couple nights, some left over for food.”
Jamie takes Marshall and nods to the door to number three. Tyler hesitates. “I
didn’t…nobody was expecting this.” He folds the money up small and gestures
with it. He looks torn enough that Jamie believes him. “You don’t have to…”
Jamie sighs. “It’s fine. Hurry up and go before they finish packing.”
Tyler hands Marshall over and goes, jogging over to the door and inside again.
He’s gone for one minute and then jogs back. He looks less than happy with the
whole thing, and Jamie is less than happy and Marshall whines as Jamie drives.
 
=================
“Burgers?” Jamie offers as he drives.
Tyler ducks his head so Marshall can lick his face. He’s not hungry, but kind
of queasy. Cheap-ass vodka messed up his stomach, messed up his head. He
shouldn’t have been drunk when Jamie came to get him. Shouldn’t have let that
happen.
“No,” he says, “I’m broke anyway.”
Jamie almost rear-ends the Lexus in front of them and Tyler puts an arm around
Marshall’s belly to keep her from falling off his lap.
Jamie makes another turn, and Tyler can tell they aren’t headed directly to
Jamie’s place. He pulls into a parking spot outside a ridiculously gourmet
burger place that Tyler’s seen but he’s never even bothered reading the menu on
the window. Jamie leaves the engine running and puts the truck in park and
looks at Tyler for a minute.
“You mind waiting here with Marshall?”
Tyler shakes his head. He feels stupid, and young. He did the right thing,
taking care of Dion and Eduardo. Just. He’d hoped he was beyond this with
Jamie, that he could be a different person. That they would be partners raising
Marshall and friends or something. That he wouldn’t shit on a good thing for a
quick buck. He hadn’t meant to corner Jamie into handing over money like that,
but it had all fallen together so easy he’s not sure where he could have
stopped it.
Jamie goes inside, and Tyler sits, miserable.
It makes him feel helpless, to have done something he so clearly didn’t intend.
It makes him angry, at himself, that he can’t manage to be someone better for
two damn minutes. He takes a deep breath and thinks about bailing. About
leaving Marshall on Jamie’s seat, the engine and AC running and leaving. He
could wait just out of sight, make sure nobody took Jamie’s truck while he was
getting food. Rabbit as soon as Jamie came out.
He sits and holds onto Marshall and tries to breathe himself sober.
Jamie comes out a few minutes later, carrying a glossy shopping bag with the
food inside, and Tyler draws himself up, squares his shoulder.
“That’s not gonna happen again,” he says when Jamie climbs in beside him. “And
I’ll pay you back the sixty.” He’s not sure where he’ll get the cash, but
something always comes up. Starting his winter savings can wait, will wait.
“Tyler,” Jamie says, and he sounds more tired than angry. “What the hell?
Just—what are you talking about?”
The smell of burgers fills the truck and Tyler’s stomach churns unpleasantly.
“I didn’t think it through,” Tyler says, trying to find the words. “I just. I
wanted my friends to meet you. And Marshall. I forgot what it looks like, that
place.” Jamie reaches out, lays his hand on Marshall’s head, inches from
Tyler’s arm. He scritches behind her ears, and if his fingers brush Tyler’s
wrist, they can both pretend it’s not intentional.
“Look,” Jamie says, gently reasonable. “I think your friends really needed that
money. And I don’t mind giving it up. And if you tell me you didn’t try to
trick me out of it, I’ll believe you.”
Tyler’s eyes prickle, and it’s too much, too real. He can’t remember the last
time someone told him they trusted him, even a little.
“If we keep…owning a dog together, this is going to come up again,” Jamie says.
“You know people that don’t have money, and I’ve got a little money, and I
can’t expect you not to ask, not to ever let me see that someone could really
use a little cash.”
Tyler’s chest hurts and he shakes his head. He knows he fucked up, but he
doesn’t want to lose Marshall, really doesn’t want to lose Jamie.
“Hey, hey,” Jamie says, and touches the back of Tyler’s neck. That pity is what
it takes for him to pull together the shreds of his dignity, to straighten his
back and harden his heart. He’s about to ask for the damn key so he can get out
of here, if Jamie even wants him taking care of Marshall this week.
“I was thinking I could keep some money in the truck,” Jamie says, and Tyler is
startled enough that he turns to look at him. Jamie opens a little change-
compartment that’s currently empty. “If somebody you knows needs it, and
there’s money here, you take it. The same with the key-dump bowl on the kitchen
island. Any loose money there is okay for you to take. No strings attached. I
won’t put any more in there than I’m willing to give. That’s my end of the
deal. I can’t resent anything I put in those spots.”
Tyler just stares at him, trying to figure out how the hell this guy works.
Jamie ducks his head, rubs the back of his neck.
Tyler licks his lower lip, takes a breath.
“I won’t ask,” he promises Jamie. “Not for a penny. Ever.”
“Tyler,” Jamie sighs. “Look. I want…to make things better. If you need, for
you, anything, I want to know about it.” He goes back to petting Marshall, and
Tyler nods, trying to wrap his head around what the hell Jamie means.
“Come home with me?” Jamie asks, and Tyler could say no. Could take the key and
not go to Jamie’s place until the next day when Jamie’s gone.
“Yeah,” he says, and feels the knot in his chest start to unwind.
 
=====================
Jamie got Tyler’s burger mostly as a joke. It’s ridiculous-- pancetta, brie,
whiskey-soaked pears and caramelized onions. Tyler is looking a little green by
the time they get back to Jamie’s apartment though, so he leaves it in the nest
of sweet potato fries and puts it in the fridge. He gets out a little bottle of
ginger ale that he has on hand for his own hangovers and brings that to Tyler
instead.
“Here, it’ll settle your stomach. I can get you Tylenol now, and Motrin after
you eat something.”
Tyler takes it, and Jamie hates seeing him like this, subdued, his fire
diminished. He thinks of Tyler, sleeping in that place, the noise and smell and
uncertainty of it.
“You wanna take a shower?” he offers, “Maybe nap? I’ll be out here finishing up
laundry, if you want to take the bed.”
Tyler nods and gets to his feet.
“If you want me to throw your clothes in, just toss them out the door. You can
wear something of mine to sleep in.”
Tyler takes him up on the offer, and it’s strangely domestic to pick Tyler’s
clothes off the floor by the bathroom, his lights and darks joining in the
piles with Jamie’s.
He replaces them with a t-shirt and a pair of sweats that will run long. He
adds one of his Stars hoodies to the top of the pile and turns the AC down
another couple of degrees, perfect for curling up and sleeping in, and he turns
the bed down while Tyler’s still in the shower, puts a bottle of water and a
bottle of Gatorade on the nightstand.
And that’s…all he can do. He heads to the living room and occupies himself with
his guitar and a movie on the TV, rolls a ball for Marshall to play with until
she’s tired and bored with it. A couple hours go by and the laundry finishes.
He separates Tyler’s back out and packs his own in his suitcase.
Tyler wanders out of the bedroom then, sleep-ruffled and his Mohawk soft and
free of product. He looks more himself than he did earlier, relaxed and
smiling, rubbing his face sheepishly. Jamie…fuck, he likes how Tyler looks in
his clothes, the hoodie’s sleeves halfway down his hands, his sweatpants
hanging low and loose around Tyler’s hips.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to crash out on you like that.”
Jamie shrugs. “You look like you needed it. Food?”
Tyler quirks a crooked grin, ducks his head and Jamie follows the curve of his
neck, the back of his skull, beautiful and vulnerable. “Yeah. I. Sorry I was
dumb earlier. About you buying.”
“Burger’s in the fridge,” Jamie says, and lets the apology go.
Tyler ruffles Marshall and wanders to the kitchen. He opens the to-go box and
peeks inside, sniffs and looks over at Jamie. “What the heck is on this
burger?”
It’s Jamie’s turn to flush and grin. “You were being a dumbass so I got you the
craziest thing I could find on the menu.”
Tyler snorts and pops it in the microwave, gets out a knife and fork since the
bun is so sloppy with juices. He perches on a stool after the food is heated
and takes a curious bite. The noise he makes has Jamie wondering for a second
if he’s choking, and then his eyes slide closed and an absolutely obscene moan
comes from his throat.
“Holy shit, that…” and then Tyler doesn’t talk at all as he methodically cuts
and bites and chews and swallows, silent except for the occasional groan. He
finishes half of it and pushes the plate away, lays his head on the cool
granite of the counter.
Jamie laughs silently and shakes his head.
“Give me a minute,” Tyler says, head still down, “I’m going back in.”
Jamie grins and reaches over to close the lid on the box again. “Later. It’ll
still be there, and as good as it is going down, it’ll still be bad coming back
up.”
Tyler sighs like it breaks his heart but he steps down from the stool and lets
Jamie put the food back in the fridge. He pokes through the DVDs while Jamie
straightens up the kitchen.
“I’ve got to get to bed before midnight,” Jamie says, even though it’s only
eight. Tyler nods and picks a box and puts the disk in the player. They sprawl
on the couch for a while and let Marshall come up and sit between them. Tyler
is just so cuddly-looking that Jamie wants to grin, wants to touch, wants to
have Tyler’s attention on him instead of the TV.
“So big day tomorrow?” Tyler asks a little later, when the movie hits a long
stretch of the male lead’s tragic past. His tongue flicks over his lower lip
and Jamie can guess where this is going, and yeah, he wants to come, wants to
come with Tyler, but he wants something else more. He reaches out before Tyler
can offer, cups the side of Tyler’s face in one big palm, his thumb on the soft
skin in front of Tyler’s ear and his fingers wrapping the back of his neck.
Tyler’s face does a weird contortion, emotion flashing over his features,
confusion that borders on hurt, if Jamie was to guess, and he wants to take it
back, pull his hand away, but Tyler closes his eyes and leans into the touch.
Takes two deep breaths and then looks at Jamie, bewildered but…maybe cautiously
hopeful.
“Is this…okay?” Jamie asks and for one second, Tyler’s face is his usual
flippant grin, before the vulnerability breaks through again.
“This…what is this?” he asks, and Jamie strokes his cheek with his thumb while
he tries to find the words, the truth that won’t scare Tyler away.
“Can we just make out?” Jamie asks, steeling himself for the hurt of rejection.
“Can we take our time and try it this way?”
Tyler swallows hard and Marshall squirms in her sleep between them.
“Yeah,” Tyler says, sounding hoarse all of a sudden.
Jamie leans in, and he’s never kissed a boy before, so he does it like he
kisses girls, gentle brushes of his lips until Tyler leans in more, lips parted
as he kisses Jamie back. He expected Tyler to be smooth at this, practiced, but
his motions are nervous, jerky. Too-rough and then he freezes like he expects a
shove.
Jamie just wants to wrap him up, make everything good for him. He gets his
other hand on Tyler’s waist, nuzzles their cheeks together and kisses at the
corner of his mouth.
Marshall gets squished between their thighs and wriggles awake, dumping herself
off the couch in an inelegant flop. Tyler snickers and Jamie presses their
foreheads together until they can stop laughing at their poor offended puppy.
He dares to reach up and stroke the pink fringe of hair down the center of
Tyler’s scalp, finds it softer than he would have thought. The short hair
beside it is just long enough to feel sleek instead of velvety under Jamie’s
hand. Tyler smells like Jamie’s soap and Jamie’s shampoo and Jamie’s deodorant
and he’s selfishly pleased. Wants him here, in Jamie’s space, in his clothes,
in his smell all the time, safe and happy.
He flicks his tongue out and Tyler’s lips part; Jamie looks just in time to see
another of those pained flashes cross his face, even as Tyler makes an eager
noise and presses in for more.
“We don’t have to…” Jamie starts, but Tyler cuts him off.
“It’s good. It’s good, I’m okay, I’m…” His fingers fumble at the button of
Jamie’s jeans and Jamie slides his hands down Tyler’s wrists, wrap around his
hands and hold him still.
“You don’t have to do that,” he says, more sure. Tyler winces and looks down,
and Jamie leans in temple to temple, stays still against him for long seconds.
“Then what do we do?” Tyler asks, like he can’t figure out how Jamie could want
to spend time with him without an orgasm.
“We watch the movie,” Jamie says, “and you lean here against me.”
Tyler looks confused, but he settles against Jamie, nuzzles in and feels out
the position. Jamie puts his arms around Tyler’s shoulder, feels their bodies
relax against each other, the way they fit. Tyler isn’t a small guy, but Jamie
has the reach to make it work.
“Hey Jamie,” Tyler asks, so soft Jamie leans in to hear him better. Tyler’s
eyes are on the television, reflecting the flashy cityscape that’s zooming
past. “Did somebody bad-touch you? ‘Cause if they did, if that’s what this is
about, you are a big dude now, and I’ll ride with, if you’re ready to go beat
their ass. If it would make you feel better.”
Jamie is touched, and so, so sad that that’s where Tyler’s thoughts go when
someone wants more than sex from him. “Nobody hurt me,” he says, presses his
lips against Tyler’s hair. “I just…I like this. I like you.”
Tyler is quiet, and Jamie would give back his signing bonus to know what he’s
thinking.
The movie plays out, and Tyler gets more and more relaxed against Jamie’s side.
It’s not yet Jamie’s absolute-latest bedtime, but—even like this, quiet and
drowsy and not openly challenging, Tyler makes Jamie feel like he can be bold.
“Will you come to bed with me?” Jamie asks, “Do you want to?”
Tyler’s turns his head to look up at Jamie, trying to figure him out. “I want
to get off,” he says like a counter offer. “I get to make you come too.”
It’s not exactly what Jamie had in mind, but he’s not made of stone. “Whatever
you want,” he says, and kisses Tyler again, sweet and careful.
But Tyler, Tyler is done with sweet and careful, apparently. He growls and
turns towards Jamie and climbs to straddle his lap. He gets a good grip on the
longer hair at the back of Jamie’s scalp and pulls his head back so he can
control the tease of Jamie’s mouth, licking the tip of his tongue between
Jamie’s teeth, nipping at his lips.
Not what Jamie had in mind at all, but a man would have to be dead not to take
Tyler’s hand when he climbs to his feet and offers it. He thought he was ready
for Tyler’s shift in gears, but he nearly swallows his tongue when Tyler strips
off the oversize hoodie. He looks instantly older, stronger, his lean muscular
back beautiful, even in Jamie’s extra large t-shirt as he leads the way to the
bedroom.
“Can I blow you?” Jamie asks, and Tyler snickers.
“Isn’t that my line?” But he climbs onto Jamie’s bed, knees spread and toying
with the waistband of the sweats he’s still wearing. His belly is so pale,
flashes of near-white beneath the cotton. He’s half-hard, the line of him
visible through the fabric when he pulls it taut. Jamie reaches out, rubs over
Tyler’s dick. He’s never touched another guy like this, never felt the shape of
another man’s hard flesh under his hand.
Tyler watches him, eyes heavy and lips parted. His breath catches as Jamie
strokes him through the sweats, as Jamie leans down and feels along him with
his lips. He props himself up on his elbows so he can watch, so he can see as
Jamie carefully, slowly, pulls the elastic away from his waist, out and down to
bare his cock to the air.
Jamie looks up and Tyler’s dick bounces itself up to tap his chin and he can’t
help but smile, nervous and unsure. Tyler is still mostly-dressed, so Jamie
feels like it’s not a big deal that he is too. He tries to tell himself that
the way he looks isn’t going to be a problem, and a blowjob can be pretty damn
bad and still feel good.
“Hey,” Tyler says, seeming less than certain himself. “Don’t swallow, okay?
Pull off. I’ll tell you when.”
Jamie might have fantasized about Tyler coming in his mouth, but faced with the
reality of it, he’s just as happy not to. “Yeah,” he agrees, and lets his
breath hit Tyler, flicks out his tongue to taste. It tastes like skin, like
soap mostly, like nothing. He eases back Tyler’s foreskin and presses his lips
to the sheltered smoothness of his head. The pearl of dampness there is salty,
like tears.
“Yeah,” Tyler breathes, shaky. “Like that. So good, Jamie.” His thighs are like
steel under Jamie’s hands, tense with the struggle to hold himself still as
Jamie explores him. Jamie kisses the shaft and brushes his lips along it,
flicks his tongue again and dares a wider, longer lick.
“Please,” Tyler gasps, backs it up with a hint of whine. “I need…I fucking
need…”
Jamie takes three quick breaths to ready himself and then wraps his lips around
the head, feels Tyler strange and heavy in his mouth as he goes down halfway,
jaw open at an awkward angle to let him in. He pulls back and moves his
shoulders a little, goes back down again, easier this time, discovers he can
still breathe through his nose.
“Fuck!” Tyler grunts out, hips snapping up and Jamie almost chokes. “Sorry,
sorry, shit.” And Tyler holds himself down again as Jamie pulls back to cough,
to reassure his throat he’s not dying. Tyler lays down flat and reaches to pet
Jamie’s hair, running his fingers over Jamie’s scalp as Jamie goes down again
and tries to find a rhythm.
“Hey.”
Jamie almost misses Tyler’s warning, “Jamie, Jamie, hey. Pull back. Gimme.
Gimme your hand, okay?” Jamie will. He will in just one second; he wraps his
hand around Tyler’s dick in preparation, just one more lick, one more suck.
Tyler’s heel pushes hard on Jamie’s collarbone and he looks up, startled,
pushed away so his mouth can’t reach Tyler’s dick anymore. Tyler reaches down
and wraps one hand over top of Jamie’s, squeezing it until the pressure is just
right and jerking at the speed he wants. The other hand pulls his shirt up,
baring his lean torso, his beautifully cut abs. His face scrunches up and he
bites down on his own lip, silent except for his harsh breathing as he comes
over himself.
It’s so fucking hot to see it, see Tyler falling apart like that from something
Jamie did. He crawls up Tyler’s body, presses his face to Tyler’s chest and
feels his pounding heart against his cheek. He fumbles his way inside his own
pants and gets a hand on his dick. His hips jerk forward and he jacks himself
off and it only takes a few seconds before he’s coming too, the room and the
world and all his worries about how he looks whiting out around him.
Tyler is stroking his hair when Jamie blinks his way back to reality, smiling
when Jamie looks up at him.
“I thought I was gonna get you off,” Tyler says like it’s half a complaint.
“You did,” Jamie says, and it’s the truth. Tyler here, under him, the smell and
feel and warmth of him. It wouldn’t have been anywhere near as good, as sudden,
as powerful without him. He kisses the center of Tyler’s chest through his t-
shirt, feels him sigh and relax.
“Will you sleep here?” Jamie asks, the recent orgasm making him brave or
stupid.
“Tonight?” Tyler asks, and Jamie thinks of tomorrow, when he’ll be in a hotel
in Fort Worth and Tyler will be somewhere else, alone. Maybe not alone, and
that idea is even scarier.
“Yeah,” Jamie answers, “But while I’m gone, too. If you want to. It might be
better. You know, for Marshall. For someone to be here at night with her.”
“For Marshall,” Tyler repeats deadpan, and Jamie can hear that he’s being
teased, but it doesn’t matter.
“Yes?”
Tyler huffs but Jamie looks up and sees him smiling. “For Marshall, then.”
“And tonight?” Jamie asks, afraid that he’s pushing it, asking for too much.
“If you want,” Tyler says, soft.
===================
Jamie seems like the kind of guy who likes doing things, likes being useful, so
Tyler lets him get a washcloth out of the bathroom while Tyler lounges around
in the afterblow. He needs those moments to try to pull himself together, to
get his head on straight. He feels drunk in the not-good way, dizzy and
confused, the earth snatched from under his feet. People don’t…not with him,
not like that. Jamie did, and it…
“Hey.” Jamie looks worried as he kneels on the bed, and Tyler takes the warm
cloth from him and cleans himself up. “Are you okay?”
Tyler blinks, and wonders if he spaced out there, so much to think about that
his brain just refused to work on the job at all.
“Yeah, I’m…sure.” He smiles, and lets himself feel the pleasant lassitude, his
muscles all unwound and post-orgasmic. It’s good, right, and he’s got no reason
to complain. He wipes up the mess on his belly and dabs the gob Jamie left on
the inside of his right knee. The sweatpants are still wearable, so he doesn’t
take them off.
“Is it too early to sleep?” Jamie asks when Tyler’s done, and he shakes his
head.
“You still want me here?”
“Yeah,” Jamie says, like he means something else, something more.
Tyler crawls under the covers, untucks the bottom so he can stick his bare feet
out into the cool air. Jamie turns out the light and gets in the other side of
the bed, moving closer and closer until he’s almost in Tyler’s space. His hand
settles light on Tyler’s waist, and Tyler rolls his eyes, scoots back until
he’s pressed tight against Jamie’s chest.
“Tell me if this isn’t okay,” Jamie sighs, and his hand presses firm against
Tyler’s stomach, his pinky finger just barely slipping under his waistband.
Tyler can feel him relax, lies awake as Jamie’s breathing evens out, soft
against the back of his shoulder.
He thinks about slipping out of bed, at least going to the couch. Getting some
space, some perspective.
He tries to figure out what just happened, the whole kissing on the couch
thing, and the movie and snuggling with Marshall and then the sex, the way
Jamie looked sucking his dick. He’s had guys want to play house before, but
there was always an artifice to it, something make-believe in the way they
interacted with him. Jamie sees him. Jamie gives a fuck. At least Tyler thinks
he does.
Tyler stays awake long into the night, letting Jamie hold him. It feels more
like he’s hanging out with a kid like himself, crashing on somebody’s floor or
couch or maybe a bed. Curling up for warmth in a place that’s cold, a shred of
comfort that’s all they can give each other.
Thinking about it that way he drifts, finally drifts off. Jamie’s here and
strong. Nobody’s gonna fuck with them.
Jamie’s alarm wakes them up in the morning. Jamie hits snooze and then rolls
back to hide his face against Tyler’s back. Tyler is awake though; he can’t go
back to sleep. He needs…to get it, needs things to go a way he can wrap his
head around. He wants to see Jamie looking like he did last night, the way he
saw Tyler. He needs to make Jamie see him.
He rolls over to face Jamie, and Jamie makes a grumpy half-awake noise. Tyler
reaches for Jamie’s hand, brings his index finger to his lips, flicks the tip
with his tongue.
Jamie’s eyes snap open, suddenly awake and just a little disoriented. Tyler
smirks and then slides his mouth down Jamie’s finger, tasting the sleep-salt of
him, stroking the whirls of Jamie’s fingerprints with his tongue.
“This…you don’t have to…” Jamie starts, and Tyler scrapes his teeth on Jamie’s
finger, harder than he could if it was a more sensitive part of his anatomy
there between Tyler’s lips. He’s not exactly horny yet, but he wants to be. It
feels good, the way Jamie’s words stutter, and Tyler wants that, wants to do
things to Jamie that nobody ever has. He wants to wreck Jamie, to leave him a
different fucking person when they’re done.
“I’m gonna blow you,” Tyler tells him, pulling back enough to drag the covers
off him. “For luck. For your big work thing and all.”
He pulls up the edge of Jamie’s shirt and kisses his stomach, just under his
belly button. Licks there and nips sharp enough that Jamie jumps. Tyler looks
up and Jamie’s cheeks are flushed rosy, all the way down his jaw and neck.
“Don’t…” Jamie says, like it hurts or maybe like he’s scared, when Tyler tries
to pull his shirt higher up.
And that slows Tyler down some. Reminds him that it won’t take much to be
something new for Jamie, something so good he’ll remember Tyler for a while.
“Hey,” he says, and kisses more gently at the place he bit. Lifts his head and
meets Jamie’s eye and then slowly, purposefully starts pulling Jamie’s shirt
up. Jamie turns his head away, but he lets Tyler strip his torso. Tyler isn’t
sure what the big deal is. Jamie’s a pretty built guy, a thin layer of fat over
solid core strength. This isn’t pretty gym muscles, this is hard-working, ass-
kicking strong and Tyler is into it.
“Thanks,” Tyler whispers into the sudden quiet, and he’s all about fair (when
it suits him) so he reaches down and pulls his own shirt off too. That gets
Jamie’s attention, and Tyler lets him look, lets him touch when Jamie’s fingers
trace over his abs, the edge of his ribs, the cut of his pecs. Tyler’s skinnier
than he’d like to be, so he’s glad Jamie doesn’t look disappointed.
The alarm goes off again and they both jump, startled out of the moment. Jamie
groans in aggravation and Tyler laughs, flops down half on top of Jamie when he
lays down again. He thinks back to the night before, the things Jamie wanted
out there on the couch, the things Jamie allows Tyler to do with him. He
presses a little kiss at the corner of Jamie’s mouth, and Jamie doesn’t push
him away, doesn’t rush to get to the main event. Jamie strokes down Tyler’s
Mohawk, threads his fingers through it, petting and tugging lightly.
And it’s…Tyler is the one left feeling vulnerable, the one who is reaching for
more than he should hope for. He smirks and licks Jamie’s neck, a wet gross
slurp.
Jamie groans and shudders, wipes his neck on his shoulder. “That, ugh, what?”
and Tyler pushes him back down when he tries to sit up, gets serious about that
blowjob he’s about to give. He kisses his way down Jamie’s chest, smooth and
hairless, down the soft swoop of his belly. He pulls Jamie’s dick out, gets his
pants down just enough that he can get at his gear, leaves them binding around
Jamie’s thighs.
He hadn’t lied when he’d said that first time about it being a fine dick. Short
and thick and heavy. There’s nothing wrong with it, the way it fits in his
hand. Jamie’s probably got as much meat as Tyler does, just packed into a
different shape. It’s still not a dick he wants up his ass--not that he wants
any dick up his ass, but if he did, this wouldn’t be the one. What he does want
is what that dick does, as he flicks his thumb along the underside. Wants to
make Jamie feel it, feel him.
Jamie’s breath catches and Tyler looks up, feeling a flush of satisfaction.
“You still good?” he asks, and Jamie nods, his dark eyes wide as he watches
Tyler handle him.
“Good,” Tyler breathes, and leans down to lick around the edge where Jamie’s
foreskin is stretched around the head, around and around, back and forth,
teasing that tiny ring of flesh until Jamie clenches the bedsheets with both
hands, groans. Tyler presses his lips almost-together and sucks a tiny triangle
of foreskin in, working and teasing it with his tongue, knowing it’s close to
painful, skating that edge until Jamie is squirming under him, the rest of his
dick aching with neglect.
He works up a good mouthful of spit, licks his lips then he goes down, sliding
all the way down in one smooth rush. He was right about how much of Jamie he
could get in his mouth at once, all the way down to the pubes, jaw spread wide
but his throat clear to breathe.
Jamie makes a sound like the dying soldiers in that sword-fighting movie, a
groan that sounds like it hurts to make. Tyler looks up and Jamie is struggling
to look down, struggling for focus as Tyler pulls back until the head of
Jamie’s dick is just glancing over his lips and then down again. Aimless
touches wander over Tyler’s hair and shoulders and neck. It’s so fucking hot,
in a way that gets his dick hard, but good in the other way too, where it feels
like he fits, like he works, that he can do this for Jamie, make it so right
for him.
Tyler can’t really get his hands everywhere, too much clothing in the way, but
he fondles Jamie’s balls, strokes the thin skin between them, feels them
drawing up high and close. He goes down, down, and swallows, hard suction
wrapping all around Jamie’s dick.
“Ty. Tyler.” Jamie’s voice takes on a warning tone, and Tyler hesitates, wants
to feel Jamie coming apart, coming down his throat. Jamie’s hands have gone
back to the bed beside his hips, so he knows Jamie won’t hold him down, won’t
force him to take more than he wants.
He takes too long to decide.
“Tyler. I can’t…” Jamie gasps, fighting to hold back with everything he has,
and then he’s coming, the first spurts bitter and thick across Tyler’s tongue.
Tyler pulls off, finishes Jamie with one hand while he grabs one of their
discarded t-shirts with the other to spit in.
“Sorry, sorry,” Jamie says. The flush on his cheeks has spread all the way down
his neck and chest, and Tyler thinks he could probably fuck Jamie now if he
wanted to, roll him over and spread his ass and fuck him and Jamie would let
him.
Tyler crawls up and kisses him instead, watches the play of emotion over
Jamie’s face as he tastes himself in Tyler’s mouth, trepidation, acceptance, a
brief flash of ewww and then surprise that it’s not as bad as he expected.
“I want to come on you,” Tyler says, presses his teeth hard against Jamie’s
neck but stops himself from biting down, from leaving a mark. He’s trying so
hard to be good that it aches.
“Yeah,” Jamie breathes. He’s already got his, but he’s still into it, just like
that morning in the kitchen. He pulls Tyler up, rolls him over onto Jamie’s
chest, pushes Tyler up to straddle him and yeah, yeah, that’s a great idea.
Tyler tucks his knees on either side of Jamie’s ribs and whips out his dick,
leans forward and grabs Jamie’s hair. Pulls his head back and wraps his hand
around himself, stares down into Jamie’s big dark eyes as he starts to jerk
off, holds him there as he comes, as he comes on Jamie’s chest and neck and jaw
and Jamie stares up at him like he’s the best thing ever.
“Fuck,” Tyler groans, and folds down over Jamie, presses his face in against
him, heedless of the mess he’s smearing around. This wasn’t…wasn’t the plan.
Wasn’t…
Jamie’s hands come up on either side of him, light on his arms and shoulders
and down his ribs. Just touching him, just giving him a minute to come back to
himself.
“When do you gotta go?” Tyler asks, wishing he sounded like he cared a little
less.
Jamie hmms, reaches for his clock and then settles back down. “Time for a
shower and breakfast out, if we don’t take too long and pick somewhere kind of
quick.”
Tyler closes his eyes and gives himself ten breaths before he’ll move but he
takes fifteen instead, just laying there on top of Jamie, feeling his heart
beat between Tyler’s thighs. Jamie doesn’t rush him—more of that thing he did
on the couch, just being close, gentle.
Tyler can’t resist giving Jamie’s earlobe a little suck as he pulls away at
last. Jamie smiles up at him, soft and happy and Tyler is the first to look
away.
“I’m gonna…” he gestures vaguely towards the other bathroom. “So we don’t take
too long.”
“Okay,” Jamie says, and Tyler thinks they’re going to be late anyway, because
Jamie just watches him as he pulls his pants back up over his dick, as he looks
around for his bag (still in the living room) and his shirt (Jamie’s shirt,
stuck together with jizz, not wearable). He escapes to the bathroom and turns
on the shower. Stands under the water, head bowed, wondering what the fuck he’s
doing until Jamie knocks on the door.
“If you want to come with me for breakfast, we gotta go soon.” Tyler startles
and starts rinsing off as fast as he can.
“Yeah. Coming!” he says. Towels off his hair and hates that he doesn’t have the
time to dry and gel it. He hurries into the clothes that Jamie washed for him
the night before and stumbles out the door pulling his socks on.
Jamie is standing by the island with a keychain in one hand and a fold of bills
in the other.
“This is for you,” Jamie says and hands him the ring. It’s just a single key,
the clicker to the apartment building’s security, and a green and gold oval
with the Dallas Stars logo on it. It’s the same logo from the hoodie the night
before, and Tyler smiles.
“You must really like the Stars,” he comments, and Jamie looks at him sideways.
“I better,” he says, and that’s kind of weird, but before he can comment, Jamie
is putting money in his other hand.
“This isn’t paying you to watch your own dog,” Jamie says in a rush. Tyler has
had a lot of guys give him money for a lot of reasons, but he feels a tension
start to run through his shoulders at the awkward way Jamie’s doing it. “I
just. I won’t be here if you need anything, and I don’t want you to need
something and not be able to get it.”
Tyler looks at the money, fights down the stubborn anger in his chest at Jamie
thinking Tyler needs something from him. He doesn’t. He’ll be fucking fine on
his own, especially since Jamie said the bed and kitchen are fair game. He can
handle four fucking nights in a goddamn luxury apartment eating someone else’s
food.
But Jamie looks so worried about it, and he’s got some big work thing for the
next couple of days and doesn’t need to be thinking Tyler’s broke and in
trouble somehow when he needs to be focusing on the job instead.
“Fine,” Tyler sighs, rolls his eyes and stuffs it deep in the thigh pocket of
his pants.
“Thanks,” Jamie says, like it’s Tyler doing him a favor and not the other way
around. It’s not until they’ve gone to breakfast and Jamie dropped Tyler back
at the apartment that Tyler sees the bowl where Jamie keeps his keys and
there’s another hundred dollars in there.
“What the hell?” he asks Marshall, as he lets her out of her crate. He pulls
out the cash he stuffed into his pocket and counts it. Three hundred dollars.
With what’s in the bowl, that’s…that’s a lot. That’s going-to-Austin money.
Getting into a hell of a lot of trouble money. He could…he could…
He puts twenty back in his pocket and grabs the rest, the money out of the bowl
too. Stands with it for a minute as he tries to figure out what he can do with
it. Finally he takes it into Jamie’s bathroom and rolls it up and stuffs it in
the tube of a roll of toilet paper under the counter.
He takes a deep breath and sits down on the tile. Marshall climbs in his lap,
crawls up to lick his face. He scritches her behind her ears and doesn’t think,
doesn’t think about anything at all.
“Ready to go out?” he asks her at last, and she whines and gets under his feet
while he gets her leash.
He can do this. He can do this and not fuck it up.
 
=====================
Tyler takes Marshall down to the little strip of grass by Jamie’s apartment,
carries her over the hot sidewalk like Jamie told him to, picks up her poop in
the little plastic bags Jamie bought. He thinks as he watches her playing with
a blade of grass, trying to figure out how to plan his day without the pressure
of finding food and shelter on his to-do list.
Jamie’s mentioned getting Marshall into some puppy pre-K classes or something.
To make sure she’s not wild by the time she gets big. Tyler saw a laptop at
Jamie’s place, but Jamie didn’t tell him he could use it, and he knows he’s not
tech-smart enough to make sure it doesn’t show he’s been on it. Safer to take
Marshall back up and walk to the library, use the internet or the books there.
Marshall isn’t a big fan of the elevator, and he doesn’t want her to get too
used to being carried on it, so he crouches down so he can pet her as a
distraction while it goes up. He steps out and there’s a guy coming out of the
parking garage door. Not Jamie-tall, but as tall as Tyler, crisp white shirt
and the collar unbuttoned. Probably running home for lunch from a nearby
office, Tyler would guess. Late-thirties maybe, fit and not bad looking.
He sees Tyler and glances him up and down. “Hi, how’s it going?” he asks, and
they’re going in the same direction, fall into step.
“Not bad at all,” Tyler answers. Marshall loops around him and tangles him up
and he has to spin all the way around to get straightened out.
“You live here?” the guy asks, and Tyler almost laughs, knowing where this is
going already.
“Nah. Just watching the pup for a friend.”
The guy Hmm’s and nods at that. “Hey, if you’ll be around later, you could come
over for drinks.”
And he could. Come over. At least get drunk and get off. Maybe get a little
something more out of the arrangement. If he was the thing Jamie accused him
of, that first night, he could lay down a price right now, and knowing this
place, the kind of people who live here, Tyler’s pretty sure he could get
plenty to make it worth his while.
But Jamie wouldn’t like it, and really, Tyler doesn’t need it. He could, but he
knows better than to shit where he sleeps.
“Sorry,” he says, and doesn’t think he manages to put any actual indication of
regret into his tone. “I’ve got homework to do.”
The guy blinks, like something in that surprised him, but he nods. “Priorities.
I understand. If you change your mind though…”
Tyler nods. “You’ll be the first to know.”
 
=============
 
Okay, so Tyler has never been book-smart. He knows that. The library might be
one of the places he hangs out, but it’s just because of the AC and the easy
access to the bathrooms and the water fountain. Really, besides food, it has
most of his daytime needs covered. He reads the magazines sometimes, and fucks
around on the internet if a computer is empty, checking out some sports sites,
following the Leafs.
He’s never really looked for something specific, so he needs a librarian to
help him find the section. She’s nice, and doesn’t make him feel dumb even
though it would be really easy to. He tries not to swear too much as he tells
her all about Marshall, what a smart puppy she is, and how he’s looking after
her for Jamie and trying so hard to do a good job.
She gets him to the right place but then someone else comes up asking for help
and Tyler waves her away because he’s got this. He stares at all the plastic-
wrapped spines, dozens of books. He starts pulling a few down that have good
covers or lots of pictures. It’s just so overwhelming he ends up sitting on the
floor, books piled around him, fuzzy puppy faces smiling up at him. The
librarian comes over after he’s floundered on his own. “Maybe you should narrow
it down a little. Try to figure out what you would like to work on with her
first and focus on that.”
Jamie talked mostly about trying to keep Marshall from accidentally mauling
people but Tyler thinks her pissing in Jamie’s apartment is a more immediate
problem, so he focuses on house training. He has the librarian break his twenty
and give him a roll of dimes for the copy machine, and he copies the important
parts out of about ten different books so he can take them home with him. Then
he does go home, because all the books said a puppy Marshall’s age couldn’t
hold it more than a couple hours and that every time she pisses in the house
makes it harder to teach her that’s not where to go.
The dude from earlier isn’t around, and Tyler is definitely not sad about that.
Marshall is whiny and wriggly and needs to go now now now so he runs her back
down, but she pisses in the elevator. The books say to tell her no if he
catches her doing it, but he figures it was his fault more than hers so he
settles for just ignoring it.
They get outside and he carries her to the grass, lets her play a bit. And
she’s not that heavy, he figures, and he’s got nothing to do all evening. He
goes back upstairs, gets his backpack and a baggie of her food in case they’re
out late, a bottle of water for each of them and a plastic lid from a protein
powder bucket that was empty in the trash.
“Wanna go to meet daddy’s friends?” he asks, and her little tail wags. “Come
on, baby. This is gonna be awesome. They’re gonna love you.”
 
==================
A week of good eating and all the medicine Jamie got for her has made Marshall
a healthier dog, which also means she’s a less portable dog. Tyler sets out for
the CoH, aiming to get there before the Wednesday evening service, but she
doesn’t want to stay in his backpack (and this time of day he’s not even sure
it’s healthy for her to be that hot). She wriggles to get put down and then
refuses to walk, so he carries her in his arms and she’s hot and fuzzy and he’s
hot and sweaty.
It’s pretty miserable, and when he gets to church, there’s no way she’s going
to sit in his bag like the purse-dogs some people bring in with them. There’s a
little short wall near the door though, out of the sinking sun and getting a
hint of breeze. He sits there and gets their water bottles out, listens to the
hymns being sung inside as he pours some in Marshall’s dish for her, feeds her
a few bites of kibble from his hand.
There is a long period of silence, and he knows from experience that communion
isn’t very noisy. Then another song and the ushers are coming to open the
doors, hugging the parishioners as they leave.
The couple that Tyler had been hoping to see are nearly the last to leave, Ron
tall and thin as a rail, white hair and pencil-thin mustache, David beside him
with his cane.
It always surprises him, how glad they are to see him, after that first time he
met them at the church picnic.
“Tyler!” Ron calls and they head over to him. He gathers Marshall’s dish up and
picks her up so they don’t have to walk across the grass to get to him.
“You worried us,” David admonishes. “We haven’t seen you in weeks.”
Tyler shrugs, but he can’t keep the pleased smile off his face. “I had a couple
of busy Sundays.”
“Oh?” Ron asks, and must read something on Tyler’s face because he brightens.
“Oh! Well. That calls for a celebration. Dinner?” He looks to David. “That Thai
place? The one on Lemmon with the patio?”
“That would do,” David says, but his eyes are on Marshall, bright with
curiosity. “And who is this fine fellow?”
“This is Marshall,” Tyler says, shifting her in his arms so David can reach her
but she can’t scratch him. “She’s part of the busy Sundays, kind of.”
David pets her, murmuring soft and Tyler has never seen her calm down at
attention before, but she settles and is quiet when Ron takes his turn.
“We should go before it gets too late,” Ron suggests.
They walk the short way to their car, Tyler trailing just behind them. He holds
the door as Ron helps David get in the passenger seat and closes it firmly when
David is all in.
Tyler rides in the back, Marshall in his lap, and the couple talk over the
service, discuss which songs they used and if they could think of a more
fitting one. It’s good to listen to. Tyler can’t remember his parents ever
talking like this, even before they started fighting, before Tyler started
spending nights and weekends and then weeks elsewhere, fucking and sleeping
outdoors and getting drunk with boys like him. He smiles and tips his head back
and scratches Marshall to keep her still and quiet in his lap.
They give him until the food has been ordered (he always lets them pick his,
because he doesn’t know enough to have a preference and they take such delight
in debating what he should try) before David pins him with a gaze.
“So. These busy Sundays.”
Tyler honest-to-god blushes, feels his cheeks flush warm as an uncontrollable
smile curves his lips. “So. I met a boy,” he says, and it sounds so innocent
like that, so clean. “I think I met the boy who’s gonna break my heart,” he
adds, feels his smile tremble. Ron’s smile fades, David frowns.
“Oh, Tyler,” Ron says, reaches out to put his cool and wrinkled hand on
Tyler’s. “Why do you think that?”
“Nobody has the right to hurt you,” David says, “If this boy…you don’t have to
let anybody hurt you.”
Tyler shakes his head. “It’s not like that. He just. He’s so f—freakin’ hot,
and nice and good, and somebody convinced him he’s not. When he realizes how
much better he could do, he won’t be with somebody like me.”
David sighs and Ron squeezes Tyler’s hand, his grip surprisingly strong.
“Tyler. You listen to me, kid. You are beautiful and kind and sweet. Any guy
who can’t see that doesn’t deserve you anyway. If you like this guy, if he’s as
good as you say, then he’ll see it.”
Tyler…he really isn’t used to this, to trusting and hoping. He closes his eyes,
and tries to imagine, a month from now, maybe two. With a Jamie who still likes
him, still wants him, hasn’t gotten bored yet.
“His name is Jamie,” Tyler says, and it’s embarrassing, how little he knows
about someone who has so much impact on him—at least how little he can tell to
two decent gentlemen in a nice restaurant. “He has an awesome apartment and a
sh—crappy truck.” He feels himself starting to smile again. “I left a sick
puppy at his place and bailed, the first time I met him, and he took care of
her and didn’t kick my ass the next time he saw me.” He nods down to where
she’s eating at his feet, oblivious to being talked about.
“Older then?” David asks, like it’s a test but not for Tyler. Tyler guesses he
must not have met Ron when they were young (or at least Ron was) because there
is a definite age gap there.
Tyler shrugs. “Not that much. I’m not sure…how he lives like he does. He seems
like the legit-job kind of guy, but I dunno what he does, where he works.” He
thinks back to that night in Deep Ellum. “He’s not legal to drink yet, so
pretty young.”
He tells them about that day playing pool, scamming those rednecks together,
and about how Jamie is so weird about Tyler seeing him naked.
The food is amazing. Tyler has no idea what he’s eating. Some kind of stuffed
turkey wings, and a soup that makes his nose run, and some noodles with red
stuff on them and chopped peanuts over it. But good. So good. Marshall whines
for tidbits but he feeds her dog food instead.
After, he watches Ron help David up out of his chair, gentle hands under his
elbows so he doesn’t leave bruises. It’s impossible, because he can’t even
think next month, next year, but he wants this too, this forever kind of
closeness like they have.
 
===================
Ron and David give Tyler their number before they drop him off at Jamie’s
apartment. “Don’t feel like you have to put up with any kind of bad behavior
from this guy,” David tells him, his voice firm. Tyler’s smile is fond as he
imagines David thwacking Jamie with his cane.
“I know,” Tyler says, but Ron looks at him a little sad, like he isn’t sure
Tyler does. Tyler isn’t so sure either, but there’s nothing to do about it.
It’s not really late by his usual standards. He could probably get Marshall to
bed and still go clubbing, but it’s Wednesday. Lighter crowds means it’s harder
to slip into the clubs, less chance of finding someone he already knows, less
fun to be had just hanging with people out on the streets. And…he doesn’t need
to find someone to bring him home; he has a place to sleep, and…he realizes
he’s avoiding thinking about it, Jamie’s home open for him. He takes Marshall
for one last walkies, and then they go up.
Jamie’s apartment is achingly quiet without him there. The soft hush of road
traffic outside is too soft to even count as white noise. Tyler crates Marshall
and then wanders around. Does a mental inventory of the kitchen, divides it out
by the next four days and figures he won’t leave Jamie much at that rate, but
he doesn’t have to scramble for food if he doesn’t want to. Three hundred and
eighty dollars, he remembers, and his gut twists like he’s been eating
dumpster-finds in the summer. He doesn’t have to work out how to get food at
all, and he doesn’t really know what to do with that idea, how he’ll fill his
time, how he’ll know he’s doing it right.
He just—can’t think about it so he goes to Jamie’s room instead, the broad bed
still messed up from their morning. Tyler takes off his backpack and his shoes
and stretches out in the space Jamie’s body took up, closes his eyes and
breathes in the smell of him.
He can’t remember the last time he slept in a space this big, this empty, a
locked front door between him and the next closest person. He lays on Jamie’s
bed and breathes for a while, until he grows fidgety and restless. He grabs
three pillows and the comforter that’s softer than the blanket Jamie put over
him the last time he slept on the couch. He moves out there and makes a nest,
makes a mess because there’s nobody to complain or get annoyed at him for it.
He flips through shows on the TV, and falls asleep to some show with a blond
FBI lady who works with a mad scientist and his son.
==============
Thursday, Tyler discovers the gym at Jamie’s apartment complex - cardio
machines, free-weights, a freakin’ sauna. He works out until he aches. He knows
four more days isn’t enough time to bulk up, enough time to make much change to
his body. But he knows to take advantage of every bit of help he can get
keeping his looks, keeping his shape. And he thinks maybe, if this thing
they’ve got going can possibly last, that he might be able to start a regular
plan now.
He walks Marshall every ninety minutes the first day, every two hours on
Friday, and she manages to not piss in the apartment, hall or elevator.
Friday night, he takes a few bucks out of the hiding place and heads down to
Deep Ellum. He’s never heard of the band playing at The Door before, but it’s
an all-ages club, and it feels good to lose himself in the music, the dance
floor. He loses his shirt somewhere, hot and sweaty and dying for any cool
breeze against his skin. He lets some guy lick his neck, grind their hips
together, and Tyler knows he could go home with him but he’s just not feeling
it. He’s hard, and he wants, just not this guy, not any guy that’s in Dallas
tonight.
He runs into Ava and her friends and chips in gas money to get back to Jamie’s
place, the bare skin of his back sticking to her seats and the kids crammed in
against him.
He’s exhausted but restless too when he gets back upstairs. Jerks off in
Jamie’s bed, one hand around his dick and the other caressing dry over his
hole. He thinks, maybe, he’d let Jamie do that, maybe he’d like it, Jamie
touching him. Not going inside, just touching where his body is so sensitive.
He cleans up and goes back to his spot on the couch. Wonders if Jamie will let
him stay a night when he gets back. Wonders if he’ll have the nerve to take him
up on it. Wonders if he can get Jamie all the way naked, show him just how
fucking beautiful he actually is.
Saturday morning he walks Marshall again and then gets some more money out of
his hiding place. He rides the bus up to the thrift store to find a new shirt,
dark blue and just the right amount of tight, V-necked in front and long down
his waist, the only damage on it the two tiny snags in the collar from the
price-tag staple. On the way back he stops at the grocery store. Ron promised
that the recipe on the back of the chili seasoning package is easy and good,
and Tyler has enough experience ‘helping’ in the kitchen at various places he
has slept at over the years that he thinks he can handle it. He picks up the
ingredients and heads back.
He’s just putting the meat in the fridge when there’s a knock on the door. He
holds his breath for a second, and the knock repeats and he goes to look out of
the peep-hole.
The neighbor is on the other side, head turned as he looks down the hall like
he’s keeping watch.
“Hey,” the guys calls, “Hey, it’s Mark, from a few doors down. You got a
minute? There was an email from the apartment complex. I wasn’t sure if you got
it.”
Tyler frowns. He doesn’t want to open that door, but he wants Jamie to miss
something important even less. He turns the deadbolt and opens the door, his
booted foot just inside.
“Oh hey!” Mark says, too-bright and taking a step forward only to bump back
when Tyler doesn’t let the door give at all.
“Oh, sorry. Hey. There was an email. About the 5K that’s starting outside
tomorrow. I didn’t want you to miss a class or something because of the traffic
situation.”
Tyler honestly can’t tell if the guy is trying to be helpful or just looking
for a way in. Either way, he’s heard what he needs to.
“I don’t have school on Sunday,” he says, flat, and Mark’s smile doesn’t
diminish.
“Oh. Then you could hang out today. What do you drink? Beer? Vodka?”
“No thanks,” Tyler says, with a lot more politeness than he would if it wasn’t
Jamie’s home he was in, Jamie that he’d be making a bad impression of. He goes
to push the door closed, because the guy just isn’t getting the hint otherwise,
but there’s a foot in the way.
Tyler pulls himself up to his full height, takes a deep breath in that broadens
his shoulders and raises his chest. “You’re gonna want to move that foot,” he
says, and the guy shrugs.
“Aww, don’t be that way. I’m just trying to be friendly.”
“Then move,” Tyler growls, and Marshall is whining and dancing like she wants
to come to his aid but is scared out of her puppy mind.
“Have a drink with me. Just one. If you don’t like it, you can leave.”
Tyler yanks the door open a couple inches, and Mark falls off-balance against
it. And then there’s room, for Tyler’s foot to strike out quick, hit him right
at the cuff of his fancy dress slacks. Mark yelps and draws his foot up and
Tyler shoves him back out of the door.
“Fuck off before I call the cops, you fucking asshole!” he swears, heart-
pounding afraid, throwing out the bluff before the other guy can use it. “I am
fifteen years old and you’re offering me hard liquor to suck your dick; you do
not want me telling the world about it.”
The guy stumbles back, calling Tyler a slut and a tease but his eyes are wide
and it’s starting to sink in, the kind of trouble he could be getting himself
in for the sake of getting his dick wet.
Tyler slams the door and locks it. Fuck. Fuck fuck. He gathers Marshall up and
wonders if Mark will call the cops first. He’s sure he kicked him hard enough
to leave a bruise, maybe hard enough for the bruise to match the treads on the
front of his boot. It’s only the fourth floor, and the balconies have great
rails. He’s sure he could drop down, even carrying Marshall in his bag.
He wants to call Jamie, but Jamie is busy, didn’t ask Tyler to call him, left
money so it wouldn’t be necessary. He’s not sure what would be worse, bugging
him while he’s at a work thing or having the police show up at the apartment.
He thinks of all the ways this could go wrong, all the ways he can avoid or
limit the damage from things he can’t control.
He’s on full alert, but nothing happens; Mark doesn’t show his face again,
Marshall eats and goes into her crate at bedtime. Tyler gets everything ready
for Jamie to come home. He thinks, when he wakes up in the morning, the dining
chair still pressed up under the doorknob, that he was kind of dumb, spending
all that energy for nothing.
 
===============
Training Camp with the Stars is an incredible experience. The best words Jamie
can think of are like ‘liberating’ and ‘exhilarating’. Like playing at the
World Junior Tournament the winter before, he feels like he’s finally
challenged to the utmost edge of his ability, that he’ll have skilled guys to
play with, room to grow. Partnered with players that can be there for his
passes, feed him the puck when he needs it. He’s finally not the biggest fish
in a little pond and it feels amazing.
Three days of training camp, and he wants to be here for a good long time,
wants to learn everything he can from guys like Modano and Eriksson and
Richards. He likes the guys. After their workouts and practices and skirmishes
they make friendly overtures, taking him out with them and sneaking him beers.
He’s the rookie and the youngster, and he takes the position with good grace,
not letting their good natured chirping get to him.
The thing that does get to him is James Neal on the bench beside him as the
guys are going through shootout drills, yelling “Shoot the puck faggot! Just
shoot it, you’re gonna miss anyway!”
It’s been three days of this shit. It doesn’t hurt Jamie for Jamie’s sake. But
he imagines someone saying it to Tyler, one of Tyler’s street-kid friends.
Saying it with the ability to back that word up with real harm, and it flips
some switch in Jamie’s head, makes him mad in a way that even a punch to his
own face wouldn’t.
“Hey!” He barks out before he thinks about it, and Neal and half the bench turn
towards him. He knows he’s been quiet for the whole event, and people are
staring at him. He wishes he could listen to that voice that’s saying ‘this is
the wrong kind of attention’ but he can’t.
“That’s enough,” he says, hopes Neal gets it and shuts up.
“What?” Neal seems more puzzled than offended. “Dude. I didn’t mean anything by
it. It’s fine. Not like anybody here thinks I’m seriously calling them gay.”
“I’m serious that you’re pissing me off with that shit,” Jamie cuts back, and
Neal looks clueless before annoyance takes over.
“Fuck you,” Neal says, looking around for support. There is a murmur of
confusion around, like nobody can figure out why Jamie is making a big deal.
“Yeah, fine, fuck me, whatever,” Jamie says, “But use that word again and I’ll
punch your teeth down your throat.”
The captain skates over then, drawn to the discord.
“Problem, gentlemen?”
“Faggot doesn’t like the word faggot,” Neal complains, and Jamie grinds the
mouthguard between his teeth.
“Don’t say faggot,” Mike snaps at Neal, “Don’t make trouble,” he tells Jamie.
Jamie nods, but he means it more like ‘I’ll try’ than any promise to succeed.
 
==============
So training camp is busy and exhausting and there is media and team-building
and something going almost all day every day. There aren’t many moments when
Jamie isn’t rushing to do one thing or another, isn’t bone-tired and trying to
finish his shower and fall into bed before he sleeps on the floor.
Those moments he does find, alone and awake, he thinks about Tyler, hopes he’s
doing okay, that he’s enjoying Jamie’s TV and stocked kitchen and king-size
bed. Jamie worries did he leave Tyler enough money, is Tyler getting upset at
Marshall for pissing by the door more than she does in the park.
He wonders, in his weaker moments, if Tyler is thinking of him. If Tyler is
touching himself, or if someone else is. He feels a hot flare of jealousy,
laying in his hotel bed, Larsen snoring in the other. He doesn’t know if he’s
allowed to feel that way, if he has any right to expect that that’s not
happening, right this minute. He wants…he doesn’t know what he wants. More. A
lot more. He thinks knowing Tyler better would be a start.
 
=============
Sunday morning is another swirl of working out and media fluff. In between, he
talks to Larsen a bit, some with Wandell. Between the Danish and Swedish and
his English, they get on the topic of video games, and Jamie already has his
system set up and he’s invited them back to his place before he’s thought it
through.
Tyler’s expecting him at four, and Eriksson just told a story about showing up
with unexpected guests and finding his girl in a lacy little thing waiting for
him on the couch. She nearly separated him from his anatomy over it. Jamie
doesn’t think Tyler would throw that kind of surprise on him, but he believes
in learning from others’ fuckups, so he texts: on schedule guys coming with me

There’s a long wait and he gets caught up in tales of playoffs past.
When he looks at his phone again, Tyler has replied.
k. Just walked Marsh.wlk her again when you get here
Food on stov is ready to eat
Txt me whenevr
That…is nothing like the response Jamie was expecting, and the sharp stab of
disappointment surprises him.
wait he types back, hits send as fast as he can.
are u leavi
I can ditch them
But maybe that’s not it, maybe Tyler never intended to be there when Jamie got
home. He feels too out-there, too exposed. But he wants, for Tyler to be at his
place when he gets back. In his space so Jamie can see him, touch him later if
Tyler wants him to.
??? Tyler sends back, and Jamie debates calling him, but there’s too much going
on, too many people around.
are u leaving bcs im briging the guys? Jamie types back, taking the time to get
the entire thought out there.
And the wait for Tyler’s next message drags on and on, makes Jamie nearly sick
with the uncertainty.
yes? the reply comes at last, and that’s at least something Jamie can work
with.
rather hang with you than them he sends.
they can come if you dont mind thm meetme
I wont embaras u
Tyler embarrassing him was the absolute least of his worries, but he doesn’t
want to force him to hang out with guys he doesn’t even know.
Up to u Jamie types back.
He smiles when he reads Tyler’s reply dummass. Not gonna say don’t bring your
friends to your own dam plce
=============
Jamie meets the guys in the bottom of the parking garage so he can clicker them
in and let them follow him up to his floor in their cars. They’re with him when
he slots his key in the door to his apartment, unlocks the door and releases
the spicy smell of chili out into the hallway.
Marshall scrambles out the second the door cracks open, whining happily and
jumping up on Jamie’s shin, her sharp little nails making ripping noises on his
jeans. “What did you do to my dog?” Jamie asks, “She got huge! It’s only been
four days!”
Tyler looks over from where he’s standing at the stove. He’s wearing one of
Jamie’s Underarmor shirts, looser around his shoulders and torso than it would
be on Jamie but not actually baggy. He’s got one of Jamie’s Rockets ball caps
on too, the bill turned backwards so it covers all of the pink stripe of his
hair. He looks…just like a bro, like some rookie kid crashing at Jamie’s place
for some reason.
“Hey,” Tyler calls over, puts the lid back on the pot and wipes his hands on
the towel he’s got thrown over his shoulder.
“Hey,” Jamie says back, “Tyler. This is Philip, Tom.” He’s going to have to
have that talk soon, where he tells Tyler what his job is, who these guys are
to him. Now just seems like a really awkward time though.
“Nice to meet you,” Tyler says, and shakes hands with the guys, but his eyes
are on Jamie’s face, the stick-mark bruise on his cheekbone that he’d
completely forgotten about. Tyler’s eyebrows twitch a question at him, and
Jamie half-shrugs that it’s no biggie, tell you later.
“You play?” Wandell asks. “Hockey?”
Tyler reaches up to touch the Kelowna patch on the back of the hat, the little
cartoon dragon with the hockey stick, and shrugs. “Nah. Not since I was a kid.”
Larsen scoffs at him, tells him he’s still a kid. Of all the guys Jamie could
have brought home to Tyler, he thinks this probably works out for the best.
They’re closest in age to Jamie (and therefore Tyler), and their limited
experience with North American culture keeps them from really questioning
Tyler’s role in his apartment.
“Y’all hungry?” Tyler asks, and they’re hockey players coming off a training
camp.
“Oh hell yes,” Jamie says, and waves the guys to seats at the island and helps
Tyler serve out the chili. There’s at least a gallon of it, filling the biggest
pot Jamie’s kitchen came with almost to the rim. Between the four of them they
put it away in ten minutes, down to wiping the bowls with the slices of garlic
toast.
“Video games now?” Tom asks, and Tyler goes to get it all turned on while Jamie
gets the dishes in the sink.
Jamie lets Tyler sit out the first rotation of players, and then hands him a
controller. And then it’s on, the competition fierce, Tyler’s knee bumping
Jamie’s every time he needs a little advantage and they’re playing against each
other. He’s just glad they didn’t put money on this. Three hours go by before
Jamie’s stomach protests for attention. Tyler orders pizza and volunteers to
run down and get it from the delivery guy while he’s walking Marshall. He
seems…relaxed, happy even, and Jamie is so amazingly relieved to see it.
It’s a good day, and after the pizza is gone the guys take their leave. Tyler
breaks down the pizza boxes and Jamie brings the empty cups back to the
kitchen. It’s so fucking domestic it makes his face ache with smiling.
“What?” Tyler asks, but he’s half-smiling too, suspicious but playful.
“This was fun,” Jamie says, and Tyler cocks his head.
“Yeah?”
He’s right there and Jamie takes a step towards him, then two. Tyler doesn’t
give up any ground, despite having empty room behind him. “Yeah,” Jamie murmurs
as his hands settle on Tyler’s hips. He leans in, and Tyler isn’t leaning away,
is, in fact, watching Jamie’s mouth with open anticipation, so he’s guessing
it’s good for both of them.
Marshall makes a little yelp-whine and scrambles for her crate just a second
before there’s a knock-knock-knock on the door.
Tyler scowls and presses his lips tight. “Don’t answer it,” he says, and Jamie
frowns in his confusion.
“What?” he lets go of Tyler’s waist and heads for the door, because clearly one
of the guys must have left their phone or something, and it would be bad
manners to leave them standing when they know Jamie must still be home.
He doesn’t recognize the guy on the other side of the door, nearly Jamie’s
height, short stylish hair, polo shirt, dress slacks. He’s turned half-away
from the door, watching down the hall, starts talking before he looks at Jamie,
“Look, I just wanted to…” he turns towards the door then, starts in surprise
when it’s obviously not who he was expecting there.
“Oh. I. Sorry, wrong door.” He looks past Jamie, and just instinctively, Jamie
doesn’t want this guy’s eyes on Tyler. He takes a step, fills the man’s sight
line.
“They all look the same, don’t they?” the guys says, forces a laugh.
“Yeah, I guess they do,” Jamie says, “No problem.” He closes the door in the
guy’s face, frowns and then locks it.
“Jamie…” Tyler breathes, and he sounds shaken, nothing at all like the happy
kid he was five minutes ago.
“What the fuck?” Jamie asks, because that? That was weird.
“It’s not what you think,” Tyler says, holding the kitchen towel in both hands.
“I’m not thinking anything,” Jamie says, and something has happened, something
big. Tyler seems young, suddenly, vulnerable in a way he never has before, even
with Jamie slamming him against a brick wall. “Who was that guy?”
Tyler sighs but none of the tension goes out of him. “Just some asshole from
down the hall. He just. He tried. To talk me into going to his place. Tried to
give me beer and stuff. But I didn’t. I swear to god, Jamie, I didn’t.”
Jamie kind of wants to go back to the door, to see if he can grab that asshole
before he can get back to his place and pound his fucking face in. Tyler
though, he’s freaked out and Jamie isn’t leaving him like that.
“It’s okay,” he says, and steps towards Tyler.
Tyler takes two long strides to the side, putting the island between them.
“I’m serious,” Tyler says, and his eyes dart to the door.
Jamie is pretty sure he could just go over the damn thing and grab him, but
that’s not going to do any good at all. He puts his hands on the granite,
forces himself to stand still, to show he’s fucking listening when he wants to
be doing something.
“I didn’t,” Tyler says, “I didn’t want to; I didn’t need to. I didn’t let him
in. I didn’t go to his place.”
“It’s okay,” Jamie says again, uselessly. “I believe you. I’m not mad at you. I
promise. It’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Tyler takes a step back from the island, away from the convenient obstacle to
keep between them. His hands are fisted at his side, and he’s just about
shaking from fear and anger. His eyes though, his eyes are begging Jamie to be
telling the truth, to not hurt him.
Jamie walks up to him, slower than he did just a few minutes ago. Tyler
flinches at the touch of Jamie’s hand on the back of his neck, but he doesn’t
pull away. Jamie wraps him in a hug, the only thing he knows to do, and Tyler
leans in, lets out a slow shuddering breath even though his back is still rigid
under Jamie’s hands.
“You’re okay,” Jamie breathes, “You’re okay now.”
=======================
Tyler tolerates the hug for less than half a minute and then he takes a sharp
breath, pulls back.
“I’m good,” he says, looking down, looking anywhere but at Jamie. His jaw works
and he shrugs out of Jamie’s touch. He needs to breathe, needs some fucking
space.
“I’m just gonna…” he nods towards Jamie’s bathroom, half turning away but
keeping Jamie in his peripheral vision. Jamie reaches for him, slow enough that
Tyler can twist away from the touch, and he doesn’t follow as Tyler escapes to
the other room.
Tyler closes the door behind him, winces as it’s louder than he expected. He
throws the lock, but a door like this won’t keep a man like Jamie out if he
really wants to go through it. It’s quiet though; Jamie isn’t forcing it, isn’t
knocking. Tyler takes a shaky breath and runs his hands over his face.
Fuck. It’s fucking fucked. He just…it was going so well. Jamie’s friends seemed
chill, and Marshall was doing so good at her house training and everybody liked
the chili. And now…fuck Mark in his stupid yuppy ass. Tyler can’t breathe,
can’t get his head together. He knows—he knows Jamie is wondering now. If Tyler
is a slut like Mark thought he was. If he’s fucking people in Jamie’s building,
in his bed.
He needs…space, and space doesn’t come for free. He digs under the cabinet,
gets the money out of the roll and stuffs it in his pockets. Takes a deep
breath to center himself. He doesn’t think Jamie will stop him, not if he
thinks Tyler is coming back. He’ll walk through, say he needs some air. Grab
his phone and charger from the island and leave his backpack as a sacrifice to
getting the fuck out. The money will get him a cab, a night’s hotel and replace
everything he’s leaving behind, easy.
Okay, one more breath. And a third. Then he’s moving, his stride as casual as
he can make it, stepping out of the bathroom like he’s on a mission.
Jamie is sitting on the couch, Marshall in his lap, shoulders hunched in,
looking as small as a man his size ever can.
“Hey,” he says when Tyler comes out. He’s never been a loud guy, and now he’s
even quieter. “Did that asshole hurt our dog?” He sounds like a little kid,
begging Tyler to tell him good news even if it’s a lie.
There’s a lot that Tyler could handle Jamie believing of him, but not this and
Tyler pauses in his flight to the door.
“No. Jamie, no. I would have fought him. He just. He was pissed off and I was
scared and Marshall didn’t know whether to bite him or run.”
Jamie nods and lets Marshall lick his face even though he’s been working hard
to break her of the habit.
“I don’t…” his voice breaks and he goes silent, starts over after a breath.
Tyler stands and waits, trapped between the gut-deep urge to get away from a
situation he can’t control and the desire to hear what Jamie needs to say.
“I keep feeling like I should have been able to keep you safe,” Jamie decides
on at last. “I should have been here. But I can’t be here. Not all the time.”
“We were safe,” Tyler says, a little slower, because maybe Jamie didn’t get it
last time. “I kept him out. I made him think I was underage and was gonna call
the cops and he left.” He frowns, but Jamie isn’t looking at him.
The desperate instinct to run run run has quieted to a low disquiet in the back
of Tyler’s head and he sits down on the far arm of one of the chairs.
“I’ll call the apartment complex tomorrow,” Jamie says and Tyler tries to
follow what he’s thinking. “Make sure they have you on the paperwork as allowed
to be here. And I’ll let them know you’ve had problems with another resident. I
had a baseball bat in the closet; I put it by the door so you’ll have it if you
need it.”
“Jamie,” Tyler sighs. “Look. Shit happens. This wasn’t on you.”
He thinks Jamie will argue more, but he just nods and holds Marshall.
“Hey,” says Tyler, “She probably needs her bedtime walk. You coming down with
us?”
“Yeah,” Jamie looks up then, dark eyes deep and worried still. “I…The stuff you
were saying. I want you to know I don’t think I own you. You haven’t made me
any promises. I wouldn’t like it if you were having sex with other people, but
I don’t have the right to tell you what you can and can’t do. I wouldn’t.”
“Okay.” Tyler isn’t sure what else to say to that, what the hell Jamie could
want to hear from him. It’s like Jamie is giving him a chance to make a
commitment he can’t keep. “Come on, get your shoes and I’ll get the leash.”
They get ready and head down. Jamie is cautiously tactile, fingers reaching
towards Tyler’s in the elevator down, tugging the hem of Tyler’s shirt as they
come back up. They get back to the apartment, back to home, and Jamie dares to
put his hands on Tyler’s waist, murmurs “Is this okay?” but he’s already
drawing Tyler in for another hug, like he isn’t the one who needs it more now.
It feels good now, not stifling. Tyler breathes into the embrace, feels Jamie
relaxing against him. Listens to Marshall’s nails clicking on the hardwood
flooring as she mills around.
“Will you stay tonight?” Jamie asks, swallows hard and stays so close Tyler
can’t see his face. “You can sleep wherever you want. I’ll…wherever. Sleep on
the couch if you want.”
Tyler groans his frustration and shoves Jamie back a step, hands in the middle
of Jamie’s chest then grabbing onto his shirtfront when Jamie tries to turn
away.
“What the fuck?” Tyler asks, because seriously, “Where the fuck is this coming
from?”
Jamie’s lower lip puffs out and Tyler kind of wants to bite it, and not in a
sexy way.
“You said you didn’t go with that guy because you didn’t need to. I thought…I
don’t know if you think you need to do the stuff you do with me. The sleeping
together and the. The sex.”
The fine points of that conversation are kind of lost to the adrenaline of the
moment, but it’s the kind of thing Tyler vaguely remembers saying. He feels the
heat rising in his cheeks and hates it, that he let himself sound like a
hooker.
“Fuck you,” he cuts, but he’s not really pissed at Jamie, not this time. “I can
fuck. Like because I want to. If I like somebody.”
Jamie closes his eyes like Tyler said the wrong thing, his face tight like it
hurts to hear it. “But not always.”
“Fuck you,” Tyler says again. “You don’t get to fucking judge the shit I’ve
done, okay? You don’t…”
“I’m not!” Jamie cuts in, “No, I just…I have to know. What it was with me. Why
you would want…”
Tyler reins himself in, because another ‘Fuck you’ would be less than
productive.
“Would you have kicked me out?” he asks instead, and he knows the answer.
“No!” Jamie’s denial is little more than a whisper.
“Then I didn’t need to,” Tyler says. “And if I didn’t need to, and I did it
anyway, then I wanted to.”
Jamie stares at the floor and chews his lower lip.
“Jamie,” Tyler says, gentle but firm. “If you can’t believe in that, then I
gotta go, man. I can’t…this is too fucked up otherwise. Like. You can’t go back
and make yourself crazy putting thoughts in my head that I wasn’t thinking. You
know?”
Jamie is quiet for a long time and Tyler is already planning his exit in his
head. At least he’ll be able to take his bag, say a real goodbye to Marshall.
It’s easier now, but he wants it so much less.
“Yeah,” Jamie finally says, quiet. “If you tell me you wanted the stuff we did,
I won’t call you a liar.” He takes another breath and Tyler is about to reach
for him. “But you have to believe me back. That there doesn’t have to be…” he
makes a vague gesture that takes in the entire apartment, “Sex or sleeping or
whatever. Anything. And you can still stay here, and help with Marshall and
she’s still part yours and…”
And it’s adorable that Jamie thinks that, and if Tyler didn’t enjoy all the sex
they had, he might be tempted to test it. Instead he reaches up and grabs Jamie
by the back of the neck, pulls him down as Tyler stands a little taller and
smashes their mouths together.
“Will you shut the fuck up?” he asks after he’s done. It wasn’t really a kiss,
more an impatient press of lips against each other.
“Okay,” Jamie sighs, and he sounds relieved. “So…”
“Can we go to bed? Please?” He doesn’t want to run until he sees daylight
anymore, but he needs room to think, room to breathe, and bed works as well as
anything.
And Jamie, thank fucking god, does as Tyler asks. Puts Marshall in her crate
and brushes his teeth.
Tyler is under the covers by the time Jamie gets in, jeans traded for sweats
and still wearing Jamie’s shirt. His hair is all fucked from wearing the hat
all night, and he feels kind of self-conscious of it, trying to finger-comb it
into standing up.
“Hey.” Jamie’s stupid soft smile makes it matter a little less though, and
Tyler closes his eyes as Jamie climbs into bed and runs his ridiculously big
hand over Tyler’s cheek. “It’ll be okay,” he promises, and Tyler doesn’t know
if he means the thing with Mark showing up, or how it is between them. It’s
easy, so fucking easy, to let Jamie say it, to believe that however it ends up,
Jamie will at least try and that’s a hell of a lot more than most people
Tyler’s ever known would do.
======================
Jamie falls asleep with Tyler wrapped safe in his arms and wakes up to him
gently untangling himself and sliding out of bed. The sun is just starting to
peek through the blinds, and Jamie groans.
“Where y’ goin’?” he mumbles, and Tyler pushes him back down when he tries to
draw him back down.
“Marshall. She needs out.”
Jamie hmms. “Don’t hear her.”
“If you wait to hear her, she’ll learn to whine to wake you up.”
Jamie blinks, because he hadn’t thought of that. “Huh. When did you…” but Tyler
is already out of the bedroom. By the time Jamie drags himself out of bed, the
apartment is quiet, Marshall and Tyler gone. He fusses with the coffee maker,
and pokes through the fridge, though he doesn’t think he’s ambitious enough to
cook this morning. He digs out the take-out menus he’s collected in the last
few weeks, looking for anything that might deliver this early, but none of them
are 24-hour.
Tyler might know someplace that delivers breakfast, he thinks as he stretches
out on the couch, listening to the coffee perk and the air conditioner hum.
He wakes up at the sound of the key in the lock, Marshall’s nails on the floor,
Tyler’s footsteps.
“You didn’t have to get up,” Tyler says when Jamie drags himself upright. “Go
back to bed. She’s set for a while.”
“That was like…have you been walking her this early every morning?”
Tyler shrugs and takes the leash off her collar, lets her loose in the room.
“She’s doing good at about seven hours, as long as I take away her water dish
an hour before last-walks the night before. I walked her every two hours
yesterday, and she hasn’t had any accidents. I was going to push that to two
and a half today, see how that goes.”
Jamie kind of boggles, doing the math, the number of days he’s been gone, the
sheer number of trips up and down the elevator Tyler must have made. “No wonder
she was pissing everywhere when I was the one walking her.”
Tyler looks a little embarrassed, and he so rarely does. “I um. Went to the
library?”
“Oh. That’s. I mean that’s awesome? I was just kind of winging it.”
Tyler glances over, and Jamie can’t figure out if this is less confidence or
less bravado.
“If she’s two months old, she should be able to go two hours. That’s what the
books say.” He opens one of the kitchen drawers that Jamie rarely uses and
pulls out some printed pages. He sits down on the couch, knee touching Jamie’s,
and they go through the pages. Tyler points out the advice he’s circled because
all the books had agreed on it. Suggestions about smaller crates and less water
in the dish that he’d crossed out.
“The vet thought she might be closer to three months,” Jamie says, and Tyler
nods.
“Okay. So one last day of two and a half hours and then we bump it up to three,
see how she does?”
Jamie nods. “Yeah. And I’ll definitely walk her more. I haven’t had a puppy
before; I was treating her like a small dog.”
He’ll walk her; he’s willing to pull his weight, except— “I’ve got to head up
to Frisco tomorrow morning. Probably gone half of the day.”
“Work?” Tyler asks, and Jamie sees his eyes track the bruise again.
“Yeah.”
Tyler nods twice, slow, and looks away. “So. Am I not supposed to ask? The
whole going away for days, coming back banged up and hanging out with foreign
guys? Because if I’m not supposed to, I won’t.”
Jamie—god help him, he tries not to laugh, lips pressing together over a grin,
because put that way it sounds like something wrong, something sinister.
“No! No, you can ask. I…I just feel stupid talking about it. Like I’m bragging
or something. It’s not—I haven’t even played the first real game.”
Tyler’s eyebrow goes up and he’s still waiting for an answer to the question he
didn’t ask outright.
“I…when they guys asked if you played hockey? It’s because I do. They do. The
three of us. Play hockey.”
Tyler cocks his head. “Like professionally?”
Jamie nods, his face starting to warm, but he’s not trying to stifle the smile
anymore. He doesn’t want to brag, but he really is proud of this, how far he’s
gotten.
“Yeah. With the Stars.”
Tyler blinks. “The Stars. Are you fucking kidding me?”
“No?”
“Wow,” Tyler says, blinks as he digests that. “Dude. I don’t blame you for not
telling me. I wouldn’t have told me.”
Jamie shakes his head. “No, it’s not like that. I just. Didn’t know when to
bring it up. And I didn’t want to jinx it.”
Tyler nods but Jamie isn’t sure if he believes him or not. “I won’t tell
anybody,” he assures Jamie. He looks him over, considering, and Jamie fights
the urge to look away.
“So I got a blowie from a fucking NHL player?”
Jamie laughs, because Tyler is so ridiculous. “I haven’t even played my first
game yet.”
Tyler pffs that thought away, pushes the dog-training printouts to the side and
straddles Jamie’s lap. “You are going to blow their minds,” he promises, leans
in and nudges their lips together, gentle like Jamie likes it. “You’re gonna be
amazing.” He rolls his hips against Jamie’s, already hard.
“Hockey,” Tyler says, and that dangerous glint is in his eyes, the one that
Jamie is learning to associate with getting something amazing. Or terrifying.
“So you do the locker room thing.”
“It’s not like I look!” Jamie protests and Tyler smirks.
“You’re a stronger man than I ever was, then. But-- I mean you get naked with
bunches of guys. Shower naked with them.”
“No!” Jamie says again, hides his face in against Tyler’s neck. “Not like
that.”
“You wanna shower naked with one guy? Like that? You wanna shower with me?”
Tyler asks, low and sexy warm and Jamie clenches tight at the back of his
shirt. On the one hand, naked Tyler, and he’s seen most of him, just never all
at once. But on the other, he can’t exactly shower with clothes on, and the
lighting in the bathroom is particularly unmerciful. He imagines his body next
to Tyler’s, the sharp contrast between them.
“I…” any other words are too hard to compose, much less get out. He licks his
lips and looks up and that little flicker-frown goes over Tyler’s face. He
thinks he fucked up, wants to apologize. Isn’t even sure what he did wrong so
he arches up against Tyler, leans up to kiss him again.
“Wait,” Tyler says, “Just—wait, wait.”
Jamie freezes, because if this is Tyler backing off sex, now that he knows he
doesn’t have to, Jamie will stand by his word. Tyler is literally on top of him
though, and there’s no pulling away, no way to flip a switch and turn off the
erection that Tyler can certainly feel. He takes his hands off Tyler though,
digs his fingers into the couch and waits, like Tyler asked.
“That thing you said last night,” Tyler starts, firm and serious. “About how
you wouldn’t kick me out if we stopped fucking.”
Jamie nods. He isn’t surprised. “I remember. It’s okay.”
But Tyler doesn’t get off him.
“You know that goes both ways, right?”
And that’s…Jamie doesn’t need that. He’s not the one who’s had to do things he
didn’t want to survive.
“It’s okay,” he says, expects that to be the end of it, but Tyler clamps his
knees on either side of Jamie’s hips, grabs onto his shoulders.
“I am a selfish shit,” Tyler says, absolutely certain, “And I never know when
to fucking quit and sometimes I want to break you open, Jamie. I want to leave
a fucking mark so deep no tattoo would ever cover it up. You can’t…don’t let me
fuck you up, okay? Just. If you’re really saying no about something, make sure
I hear it, okay?”
Jamie puts his hands on Tyler’s sides, wants to draw him in for a hug if he
thought Tyler would allow it.
“You don’t have to give me everything I ask for,” Tyler confesses. “If I bail,
it won’t be over this. I promise. We can just…however you like it.”
Jamie isn’t sure he believes that Tyler could force him to do something that
would damage him, that Tyler would. But he can see that even the idea of it
scares the shit out of him.
“I’ll make sure you hear it,” he says, and Tyler’s shoulders sag with relief.
“But I…remember what you said, that it’s seeing other people turned on that’s
sexy? I want to know what turns you on. What you want to do. What you like. And
then I can decide what I’ll do, okay?”
Tyler nods, bites his lower lip. “Can we just. Like this for a minute?”
“Yeah,” Jamie says, and rubs his hands up and down Tyler’s back. “Yeah, of
course.”
He pets Tyler until Tyler relaxes into the good feelings of their bodies
touching again, the frown between his eyes smooths. Until he leans in and
kissed Jamie slow and soft. Rubs his hard-on against Jamie’s through their
clothes hot and urgent.
“How can I get you off?” Tyler whispers, “What do you want?”
“Bed?” Jamie asks, and Tyler climbs off his lap, leads the way there. He
stretches out on the bed and he looks vulnerable here for the first time,
letting Jamie lean over him, kiss his lips and jawline and throat.
It is scary as hell, to have Tyler laid out under him, to be the one checking
Tyler’s eyes for fear or hesitation as he slips his fingers under his waistband
and draws his pants down, as he bares Tyler’s cock and russet pubic hair and
unbelievably pale and smooth thighs.
“C’mon,” Tyler breathes, “Whip it out,” and Jamie pulls his own pants down
then, far enough. The skin of Tyler’s thigh feels amazing against his dick, and
Jamie humps in against him.
Tyler’s breath catches and his hand comes up to Jamie’s shoulder, pushing him
back.
“Don’t…don’t crush me,” Tyler says, even though Jamie knows he wasn’t, that all
his weight was on his arms except for where they were rubbing against each
other.
“Okay,” he says though, and lets Tyler roll them onto their sides, facing each
other, feels him line their dicks up and push hard against Jamie.
Tyler wraps his free hand around both of them, “So fucking thick,” he groans,
“Jamie, c’mere, c’mon gimme your hand, help me, c’mon, jerk us off.”
He moves his hand and lets Jamie grip them, and that was the most brilliant
idea of the week, the way they fit so good in Jamie’s larger palm. Tyler wraps
his hand over Jamie’s and tightens the grip to his liking, guides the stroke,
the pace, slow where Jamie would dive in and get it done, dragging it out until
Jamie is shaking, sweating, gasping his fucking name.
Then Tyler rolls over on top of him, pushes Jamie back into the bed and fucks
hard and fast into the tube of his hand. It’s messy and awkward, pants around
their knees and their feet tangled in sheets already displaced from the night
sleeping together. Jamie clenches his jaw and curls his toes and holds back,
holds back until Tyler spills and it’s hot and slick and Tyler goes mostly-
still but stays there, lets Jamie rub against his dick, lets him come against
him.
Tyler collapses when they’re done, panting hard and twitching through the
aftershocks. “Wanna fuck you,” he slurs against Jamie’s neck, and another full-
body twitch shivers through him. “Wanna be inside you. Want. Fuck.”
Jamie slithers his hand out from between them, wipes it off on the back of
Tyler’s shirt as he holds onto him. The idea—Tyler fucking him. It’s like the
shower offer but even more, bigger. The thought of it makes his asshole clench,
his dick try to throb back to life. But it’s terrifying too, being that
vulnerable, that open, and if Tyler doesn’t want him after, he’s not sure he
would ever dare to let anybody else inside like this, so far in his heart they
could ruin him.
“Sorry,” Tyler whispers, “I won’t, I won’t, but I think about it, Jamie,
sorry.”
Jamie has no fucking idea what the hell is happening in Tyler’s head, just that
he’s clinging like he’s trying to press inside Jamie’s skin over the entire
length of their bodies, like he’s trying to tuck his head into Jamie’s neck
until they’re one person.
“Shhhh,” he soothes, and rubs his back again. “Maybe we could…”
But Tyler shakes his head, shuts up and holds on, and it was a shitty night and
early morning. If Tyler doesn’t want to talk, he doesn’t have to. Jamie pulls a
sheet half-over them and they drowse again for a while until Marshall gets them
up, whining for attention.
“Mmm. What are you making me for breakfast?” Tyler asks as he rolls off, their
bodies sticking together in a totally gross kind of way. Jamie makes a mental
note to never ever fall asleep sticky again.
“IHoP, Denny’s or Cafe Brazil,” Jamie offers, and Tyler snickers.
“Did you go to cooking school for that or what?”
Jamie ruffles his already-squashed hair and Tyler pouts and gets tangled up in
his pants, nearly falls on his ass getting out of bed.
“Hey,” Jamie says, feeling suddenly warm, suddenly soft. “That was…I liked
that. A lot. Thanks.”
Tyler huffs and rolls his eyes and turns away, but Jamie catches the smile on
his lips, and thinks maybe Tyler hasn’t had enough people noticing when he does
something good.
=====================
Given the choice, Tyler picks IHoP, because seriously, cheesecake-stuffed
French toast. Jamie teases him that he eats like a five-year-old and Tyler,
sitting on the other side of the booth, stretches casually and flexes his
muscles and asks if he should go on a diet.
Jamie turns pink and changes the subject, talks about the training camp they’d
done in Fort Worth, gives Tyler the rundown on all the guys he played with,
their strengths and weaknesses. It’s been years for Tyler, since he laced up
and felt the weight of a stick in his hands. There’s a moment when it hits him,
that he’d be gearing up for his draft year right now, if things had gone
differently, if he had been able to keep out of trouble, keep his dick in his
pants.
He stuffs a big bite of sugary sweetness in his mouth and makes a face that
gets him a full-on laugh from Jamie.
Tyler is still chewing when Jamie’s phone rings and the place is empty and
quiet enough, late on a Monday morning, that he answers it at the table.
“Jordie! Hey. What’s up? Nah, just breakfast with Tyler.” There’s a long pause
then, and Jamie rolls his eyes. Tyler can hear a man’s lecturing tone on the
other end, but can’t catch the words.
“Jordie,” Jamie finally cuts in, exasperated but fond. “We’re eating here. What
did you call for?”
Tyler pokes his food and watches the play of emotion over Jamie’s face, the
hint of trepidation, the intense way he listens, the way he lights up at the
end, delighted and…relieved. “Oh shit! You’re signed? When do you fly in? Are
they putting you up in an apartment? Mmhmm. Uh huh. Yeah. Yeah, I can pick you
up. Text me the details. Yeah. Uh huh. Congratulations man. This is. Really
cool.”
He hangs up and Tyler tries to stay casual. Doesn’t know if he should ask or
not, if it’s any of his business.
“That’s my brother,” Jamie says, and Tyler isn’t surprised, the way Jamie had
talked to him. “He plays, too. With the Grizzlies in the BCHL last season. He
just signed with the Allen Americans. He’s coming down later this week.”
Tyler smiles because he’s supposed to, because Jamie is. This is good news for
Jamie, even if Tyler isn’t sure how this is going to work, what Jamie’s brother
will think of him.
“Awesome!” he says, and Jamie grins.
“He’s going to be mostly up in Allen, but if we both have a half-day off or
something, he can come hang out, or I can go up. We weren’t sure, if he was
going to be able to sign in time for the season. He sent out feelers when I
came down for prospect camp, but didn’t look at it seriously until they told me
I was going to be here and not with the Texas Stars.”
Tyler cuts off a piece of crust and chews on it. “He’s coming to Texas to watch
your back?”
Jamie smiles. “Pretty much. Just so I can have family somewhere within driving
distance, for emergencies and whatever. A familiar face to see every now and
then. I’ve never been too far from home. Kelowna was only like a six hour drive
and that felt like forever away.”
Tyler doesn’t know whether to tease him for being such a homebody or envy him
having someone who would reshape their life to take care of him, to make sure
he can succeed to the best of his ability. Someone who’ll make sure Jamie
doesn’t get taken advantage of by gold-digging assholes like Tyler.
He eats, because fuck it, the food is here and it’s free and things are
changing already. He knows better than to waste a good thing.
“Hey,” Jamie says, and Tyler is starting to hate that gentle tone. He knows
that he’s showing things when he hears it, stuff he’d rather hide.
“I told him. I…came out.” Jamie’s voice is low but his cheeks are pink and he’s
smiling. “It was okay. It was good. He. He’s my brother and he loves me and it
doesn’t matter to him. It’ll be okay, him living closer. I know he’ll like you.
The guys thought you were cool. Cooler than me, even.”
Tyler scoffs “Like that’s hard,” but a smile plays at his lips. He wants it to
be fine. Wants Jordie to like him. He just doesn’t want to fuck up.
“He knows about us fucking and stuff?” he asks, and that flush on Jamie’s
cheeks goes even darker.
“Kind of? He knows I like you. Not that we’re…stuff. Not in so many words.”
Tyler nods and eats.
“Trust me,” Jamie asks, and Tyler says “Okay.” He’ll try. That’s all Jamie can
ask, right?
They finish eating and run some errands. Jamie needs a house-warming gift for
his brother now, and takes it hilariously serious. They go to like a dozen
stores before Tyler drags him into a Starbucks, points to the ridiculously
overpriced coffee makers on sale and tells Jamie if he isn’t happy with that
for the gift then he can finish the shopping on his own.
He’s a little surprised when Jamie pauses and stares and then nods. “It’s
perfect.”
They go back and walk Marshall. Three hours and she’s held it, and Tyler thinks
they’ve really turned a corner with the house-training. That Jamie won’t have a
reason to get rid of her, that she’ll be fine, no matter what happens.
They go use the gym downstairs and then come up to shower, order Thai delivery
and watch a movie. Go to bed and Tyler blows Jamie in the dim glow of the city
lights filtering through the blinds. Fucks Jamie’s mouth with two fingers while
he jerks off on his bare chest.
Tyler cooks and they eat breakfast together the next morning, rushed a little
because Jamie needs to get up to Frisco.
And then Jamie gets in his truck and goes, leaves Tyler and Marshall and an
empty apartment again.
It’s a relief when Tyler plugs in his phone and it buzzes with stored-up
messages.
check in is his dad’s monthly two-word order. He wants to send back a ‘fuck
you’ or ‘go to hell’ but the last time he got mouthy they shut his phone off
for two weeks and shit is hard enough with a way to communicate with people.
Without it, he ended up sleeping outdoors three times in two weeks and it
fucking sucked.
k he sends back, and it’s short but won’t get him in trouble.
The next message on his phone is more welcome. got $ for tile can you help out?
from Kendra and Marco, and he smiles at the phone.
u trust me w tile? he asks, because painting a feature wall or a little light
demolition like he’s done for them is one thing. This sounds…technical.
It’s half an hour before he gets a reply, and he uses the time to get the
kitchen cleaned up, make the bed, change the towels in the bathroom.
ill show u how. U do the work is the response and he thinks if they’re willing
to risk it, he’s willing to learn.
can u touch up my color? he asks, and the immediate response is yes. U need a
ride?.
He gives her the address and tells her to look for the grocery store. He packs
up Marshall’s food and snacks and favorite chew toys and goes down to meet her.
Kendra picks him up in the parking lot in her little VW Beetle, coos over
Marshall as the puppy scrambles into the car. She grabs Tyler’s head as he sits
down in her front seat, parts the hair of the Mohawk so she can check his
roots.
“Well I’ve got my work cut out for me,” she says as she lets him up, and he
grins. “Marco’s cooking tonight; will you eat veggie burgers?”
“Have I ever turned down food?” he asks, and she gives him a critical once-
over.
“You’re looking really good,” she says, like that explains anything.
They drive to Home Depot, smuggle Marshall in in Tyler’s backpack so Kendra can
point out to him the boxes of tile and adhesive and grout they’ll need, spacers
and cutters, sponges and spreaders. The orange-vest in that department comes by
once, to see if they’ve got everything, but he can’t take his eyes off Tyler’s
hair for long enough to listen to Kendra’s reply. It’s just lucky that she’s
been there before, scouting and planning. Tyler loads the boxes of tile in the
trunk, trying to hurry because she can only stretch out a long lunch so long.
They go back to the house then, a 1920’s bungalow in the M Streets
neighborhood. Kendra and Marco bought it cheap, according to the story they
told him last time, and they have a cycle of saving up enough for one
renovation at a time that’s going to end them up with an investment that’s
worth twice what they paid for it. Neither of them is really physical enough
for some of the harder projects though, and they’re both intensely busy with
their actual jobs that let them buy a house in this neighborhood.
Tyler has done three projects for them since he’s been in Dallas— digging out
some ancient holly bushes, stripping some rotten siding off the garage, and
repainting the accent walls in the living and dining rooms. They let him sleep
on their couch for a couple days, feed him up and Kendra usually gets some
stuff to do his hair, dyes and gels and whatever fun thing they can agree on.
He thinks that if he ever got in a bind, got hurt bad or sick or something
where he would be outdoors with no chance of fixing it, that he could crash
here for a few days even if he couldn’t work. He wouldn’t ask to without
extreme circumstances, because they’re building a dream here, and it’s really
not a big enough house for three people anyway, but it feels good to have the
possible backup plan.
Kendra doesn’t have much time before she has to get back to work, but she dumps
him and the supplies off at the house, lets him in and shows him how to start
taking up the old tile before she grabs a granola bar and heads back out.
He puts Marshall in the tub so she’ll be safe and out of the way, rolls the
ball around the curved backrest part a few times so she learns to play alone,
plugs his phone in to charge, and then he gets to work. It’s not exactly tricky
stuff. Chisel, hammer, put the bits in the bucket. He kind of gets into a
groove, and Marshall is chewing one of her rawhides and not being needy. He
doesn’t have to think, so he doesn’t. Just gets lost in the motion, like a good
workout at the gym.
The chirp of an arriving text message surprises him and he nearly gets his hand
with the hammer. He sets down his tools and picks up the phone.
Shit. Jamie.
 
===================
Jamie goes to practice. It’s still pre-season and the coach runs them hard,
long drills and lots of yelling. That’s fine though; that’s hockey. He puts
everything he has into it, stays until it’s just him and the other rookies
picking up pucks.
After, him and half a dozen of the younger guys go out for lunch at Chipotle
down the street from the iceplex. He picks up a couple burritos to go when he’s
on his way out, to bring back home for Tyler.
He gets back to the apartment and the place is quiet. As often as Tyler walks
Marshall, it could just be that, so Jamie puts away the food and does a few
exercises on the guitar and waits. Waits and Tyler doesn’t come back. He gets
up to get another Gatorade, and doesn’t kick Marshall’s water dish over again,
because Marshall’s water dish isn’t there, and neither is the one for food.
That…he’s not sure how to take it. He doesn’t think Tyler would steal their co-
owned dog and disappear. Tyler hadn’t seemed pissed off at him when he left, or
scared or upset or anything.
He takes out his phone and sends a quick text, a hey where are you?
He stares at the words he sent and they look wrong. Needy or possessive or
both. Shit. He follows up with a quick just wondering if marshall is with you
and if everything is okay.
yeah Tyler sends back. at a friends house. Gonna stay here cpl days. U wanna
come get marsh?
Jamie doesn’t know what that means. Like individually the words all make sense,
but why did Tyler leave? Why does he want to stay away? He doesn’t know what he
could have done wrong, but he feels like he has.
if you want me to he tries, but the medium is just too imprecise for this. He
hits the call button and listens to it ring twice before Tyler picks up.
“Hello?” Tyler sounds surprised, off-balance to have gotten a call. Maybe he
should have stuck to texting.
“Hey. Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Of course. Why?”
“I just got home, and there’s no note, no dog. You took her dishes. I thought…”
something stupid. He made a big deal out of nothing and is making himself look
like an insecure loser.
“Hey. No.” Tyler’s voice goes soft, gentle. “I just got some friends that
needed a favor so I’m helping them do some stuff on their house. I didn’t want
to leave her alone until you got home.”
“You’re staying there tonight?” Jamie asks. “I’m picking Jordie up at the
airport tomorrow, and I was thinking the three of us could have dinner?”
“Yeah, I dunno. I don’t know how long tile takes. You want to come get Marshall
and I’ll call you tomorrow and let you know if I can make it?”
“Okay,” Jamie says, but he isn’t thrilled. “Just text me the address.”
“Okay.” And Tyler sighs. “I’m sorry I didn’t leave a note,” he says. “I really
was coming back.”
Jamie nods, alone in his apartment. “I’ll head out as soon as I get the
address,” he says and hangs up. He groans and presses the heels of his hands
against his forehead. Fuck. He should have accepted the apology, should have
said it was no big deal. Something, anything.
It takes long enough for the address to come that he’s almost thinking about
checking in with Tyler again, making sure he didn’t forget.
sorry comes after the street name, nbdy home but me had to walk to the corner
and find where I am
Jamie hates it a little, how relieved he is to get Tyler’s words. on my way he
texts back, and gathers Tyler’s dinner out of the fridge to bring to him
The directions his phone gives him takes him to the other side of 75, through a
couple intersections where both streets start with an M. The houses are old
here, cute and small, with old trees and the kind of driveways that are like
two sidewalks with a strip of grass between them.
Tyler is waiting outside when Jamie pulls up to park at the curb, Marshall on
her leash beside him. He looks okay, looks relaxed, sweat darkening the collar
and armpits of his shirt, his hair falling to the side because of the humidity,
white dust flaking his shirt and forearms and a smear of it over his left
cheek. He’s smiling though, as he comes up to the passenger side door and lets
himself in, lifts Marshall up into the seat ahead of him.
“Tile fucking sucks,” Tyler says, but he’s grinning.
Jamie passes him the Chipotle bag, and enjoys the look of surprise and then
pleasure that goes over Tyler’s face. Nothing is messed up. Tyler legitimately
has something he wants to be doing, and as much as Jamie wishes he could have
Tyler waiting in his apartment to spend every free minute together, he can kind
of get that that’s not the healthiest existence for either of them.
Tyler digs in the bag and rips back the foil wrapper and takes a bite of a
burrito like he was starving. Jamie gestures to the Gatorade in the cup-holder
and Tyler makes an appreciative noise at that, drinks and takes another bite
and finally leans back and slows down.
“How was your work thing?” Tyler asks, and Jamie smiles, because hockey is
good, hockey is easy. He tells Tyler all about practice, how good it feels, how
much potential he can sense in this team, how much he wants it, to play and win
and matter. He’s not sure how much Tyler played, if it was just casual stuff
like a huge percentage of Canadian boys or if it was a little more serious, but
he follows along, smiles in the right places.
Jamie…kind of wishes he could invite him to watch the next practice, to be
there in the stands. That’s all kinds of a bad idea though, unless he’s ready
to out himself and Tyler, and he’s not. He won’t ask Tyler to pretend they
aren’t fucking, aren’t…whatever kind of together they are.
Tyler finishes the first burrito, sitting by Jamie in the cool air conditioning
of his truck. He goes to pass the second one back, but Jamie waves him off.
“Keep it in case you want it later,” he says, and Tyler smiles.
“Okay. Cool. Thanks. I should…” he points at one of the houses with his thumb,
and Jamie isn’t looking forward to going back to the apartment alone, but he
nods.
“Call me tomorrow, yeah? Either way?”
Tyler nods and sucks his upper lip between his teeth. Marshall squirms on
Jamie’s lap, trying to get at the stuff that smells so good.
“I will,” Tyler promises, empties the last of his drink and tucks the bag of
dinner under his arm.
“Thanks for this,” he says, and the more shyly, “Thanks for coming over. It was
good to see you.”
“Yeah,” Jamie agrees, “No problem.”
Tyler looks around, and then leans in and pecks a kiss at the corner of Jamie’s
mouth, smiles like he just got away with something and hops out of the truck.
Tyler doesn’t look back, but if he did, he’d see a matching smile on Jamie’s
lips.
=================
Jamie leaves Tyler and heads back to the apartment. He’s not happy to be
leaving without him, but he is satisfied that Tyler isn’t in some trouble, and
confident he’ll come back.
He takes Marshall on a walk, shorter than he planned because his legs are tired
from the morning skate.
On the way back up, he thinks it’ll work out that he has the evening without
distractions so he can clean up the apartment, keep Jordie from teasing him
about it tomorrow. He walks through the door, fired up to get this done,
and…notices for the first time that there’s not that much to do. His empty cup
from Chipotle to throw away. Marshall’s blanket is spilling out of her crate.
Other than that, the bed is made, the bathroom straightened. There are no dirty
dishes anywhere.
thanks for cleaning up, he texts Tyler. He’s getting ready for bed when the
reply comes.
no problem and maybe it’s not, but he thinks he needs to find a way to show
that he appreciates it.
goodnight he sends back, and gets a smile in return. It’s late, so he puts
Marshall up for the night, careful that he’s followed all of Tyler’s night-time
instructions about when the water dish goes up and when Marshall gets her last
walk of the day. He climbs into bed in boxers and a t-shirt, the smooth sheets
cool against his bare legs, the lights of the city twinkling through the
blinds.
He’s only had Tyler with him in this bed a few times, but it feels empty now,
too much space, not enough warmth. He wonders if Tyler thought the same,
sleeping here without Jamie. He misses Tyler, wonders if Tyler is missing him.
He sleeps poorly, wakes up and jerks off in the shower, eyes open and looking
down his body, at the thick shape of his dick in his hand. Imagines Tyler’s
hand around him, Tyler’s breath on his neck. He comes and it feels good but not
satisfying, a snack when he wanted a meal.
Jordie calls as Jamie is coming out of the shower, tells him he’s at the
airport in San Francisco for his layover. “See you soon,” Jamie tells him as
they hang up.
He thinks about texting Tyler good morning but doesn’t want to come off as too
needy, too pushy.
He walks Marshall and goes grocery shopping for some of Jordie’s favorites,
walks Marshall again and then brings her with him as he drives out to the DFW
airport, its tangled maze of terminals and gates.
Jordie sends him a text once he gets to baggage claim, and Jamie meets him at
the door with the truck. It’s only been a couple weeks since their summer
together, but it feels great to hug him, strong and solid.
“You hungry?” he asks, and Jordie grins.
They stop by Raising Cain’s for chicken since it has a patio. Jordie complains
about the heat, and Jamie figures it must feel especially hot for him, landing
in Texas, straight from autumn in Victoria.
“So where’s your boy toy?” Jordie asks after he’s had a chance to take the edge
off his hunger.
The question hits Jamie like a fist to the sternum and he frowns. “Hey. Don’t
call him that.”
Jordie frowns back and stuffs some fries in his mouth, stares at Jamie in a way
that makes him want to squirm.
“Yeah?” Jordie asks, “You and him?” He doesn’t look proud, like he had after
Jamie’s first time with a girl, doesn’t look happy for him.
Jamie feels his jaw clench, that stubbornness turning his spine rigid.
“He’s not a toy,” Jamie grits, and Jordie shakes his head. “He’s…he matters.”
“Jamie.” He takes a breath to gather his thoughts and that just makes it worse,
that Jordie is being so careful. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“Is anybody ever sure?” Jamie counters, and he feels desperate for Jordie’s
support on this. “Is any…relationship ever a sure thing?” The word feels
strange in his mouth, too big, too real.
“I like him, Jordie. I like him a whole lot. And I know he’s had a shitty time
and that has left marks, but it’s not like I’m not bringing any baggage into
this either.” Even telling Jordie that much feels like a betrayal, like he’s
giving up Tyler’s secrets. They are alone on the patio, the heat keeping
everybody that doesn’t have a dog inside.
“I am a god-damn closeted hockey player,” Jamie says between clenched teeth,
and he’s breathing too hard, his heart pounding in his chest. “He could do
better. He could. He could find somebody to be happier with. I’m. I’m so
fucking lucky, Jordie.”
“Okay,” Jordie cuts in, shakes his head in apology. “Okay. I won’t…I’ll give
him a chance, okay? If he makes you happy, Jamie, if he’s who you want to be
with and not just convenient, then I support you.”
Jamie takes a deep breath, because he knows Jordie, knows he’s not trying to
piss Jamie off, despite how spectacularly he’s succeeding.
“Do I get to meet him?” Jordie asks, and Jamie shakes his head.
“I don’t know if you should, now. But I asked him to come with us to dinner, if
he’s free. He’s helping some friends with a home improvement project right
now.”
Jordie makes a noncommittal hmm. Jamie ducks his head and eats his lunch,
wishing he’d thought to bring some of Marshall’s food for her. They drive her
home after, and Jordie teases him how nice it all is, how he’s growing up, how
he’s made the bigtime.
They go to Target for some stuff Jordie knows he’ll need at the new apartment
next. The team has set him up with a roommate and a place to live, but his
$350/week won’t get him far. He needs towels and pillows and his favorite
coffee mug broke in his luggage. They get a case of beer, and Jamie feels
ridiculous to have someone else buy for him.
Jamie steps in line in front of their cart, ostensibly so he can unload, but
really so he’ll be in front when the total comes up. He slots his Visa in the
card-reader while Jordie is showing his ID to the cashier.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Jordie grumbles, and Jamie shrugs. “It’s not a
big deal, Jordie.” Their whole lives, he’s had so little opportunity to give
back, to do something for his big brother. Even if he gets sent down to the
Texas Stars, he’ll still be doing better than Jordie money-wise, for this year
at least. It’s a lot like taking care of Tyler, the little things that don’t
cost Jamie in any real way but make a big difference.
He didn’t really tell Tyler what time to call, but he gets a text around five,
sorry, can’t do dinner and he wants to call, wants to talk Tyler into hanging
out with them, to give Jordie a chance to know him, to like him. Tyler is good
with people, was great with Jamie’s teammates. If Jamie could just get the two
of them in the same room, he’s sure they’d like each other, that Jordie would
get why Tyler is so important to Jamie.
okay Jamie sends back, drvig Jord up tomorrow, want to come? and it’s not
really a fair request, the three of them squeezed in the truck’s cab.
ill call if I can go. What time?
“Hey Jordie, what time do you want to be in Allen?”
Jordie shrugs. “Noonish?”
leaving around 11 Jamie texts.
probably not
Jamie can take a hint. ok
He holds his phone, staring at the screen, but Tyler doesn’t text back.
“No company for dinner?” Jordie asks, carefully casual.
“No,” Jamie answers, puts his phone away. Tyler is his own person, and if he’s
got things going on, Jamie isn’t going to pout about it. Too much.
 
======================
 
Tyler goes back in Kendra and Marco’s house and puts the burrito in the fridge,
turns on the radio and gets back to work.
Marco gets home at five, leans into the bathroom and looks over Tyler’s work.
“How’s it going?”
There’s not a lot in Tyler’s life he gets to be proud of, but this is
something. “Good. Good. I was waiting to disconnect the toilet, because I have
no clue what I’m doing, but I’ve got all the tiles off now, I’m just scraping
some of the old cement down.”
“Awesome,” Marco says, “You want to keep me company while I cook?”
He’s about ready for a break, so he nods, washes up and joins Marco in the
kitchen. “Can I help with anything?” he asks, and gets put to slicing tomatoes
and chopping lettuce while Marco mixes up the black bean paste and herb mixture
for the veggie burgers. Kendra comes in from work and kisses Marco’s cheek,
goes to the bedroom and changes out of her work clothes while the patties
finish cooking.
After dinner, they work on the next steps of the floor, Kendra reading
instructions from a DIY book while Tyler and Marco wrestle with getting the
toilet off the bolts and get the whole thing outside. It goes easier than Tyler
had been expecting though, and they get most of the floor laid. Tyler places
the tiles while Kendra measures and cuts, Marco trading out with her when she
gets too tired from the bad position.
It’s a good night’s work, and they get the toilet back on before Tyler is too
exhausted to carry it back in, but barely. He catches a shower, the tub floor
gritty under his feet from the construction dust. He’s tired enough that he
crashes on their couch, comfortable in the domestic coziness of it all. There
is a message from Jamie, and he smiles to read it, that Jamie noticed he’d
cleaned up, that he thought it was important enough to text about.
He falls asleep with a smile on his lips, his phone on the coffee table in
front of him. He kind of forgets the other part of the last three times he’s
stayed here, until he’s waking up in the middle of the night to Marco calling
his name, “Tyler. Hey. Tyler.”
“Huh?” he sits up, and as soon as he’s visibly awake, there is a mouth against
his, a hand on his crotch. It’s…it’s not bad. Not an infidelity thing—Kendra
and Marco both sat him down the first night and explained it. He hadn’t minded
before; an orgasm is an orgasm. Nobody here ever hurt him or did anything he
said no to. But now…
“Hey,” he says, and pulls his face away. He would move Marco’s hand, but he
doesn’t quite know how to without increasing the contact between them. He pulls
his hips away, but the back of the couch only gives him so far to go.
“Yeah?” Marco asks, and nuzzles in against Tyler’s neck, massages his dick.
Tyler’s breath catches, and he’s hard, doesn’t know how anybody could not be
hard with this going on. But just because his dick is into it, doesn’t mean he
wants this.
“I…” It’s so fucking hard to think. “Wait. Wait. I. There’s a Jamie. I. I have
a Jamie and he. This wouldn’t make him happy.”
Marco goes still but doesn’t pull away. “What do you want, Tyler? What would
make you happy?”
Tyler takes three shuddering breaths. “I want. I want to be good. I don’t want
to do this.”
Marco sits back, hand finally leaving Tyler’s body. “You’re sure?”
“Sorry,” Tyler mumbles, and he feels like he broke a deal, that he came over
and ate their food and slept on their couch and isn’t giving what they need.
“Hey,” Marco says, gently reproving, a vague silhouette in a dark room. “Hey,
you don’t need to be sorry. It was good times, yeah?”
Tyler nods, because it had been, before.
“I’ll wait for your move, if you change your mind. Just let me know.”
“Okay,” Tyler mumbles, and he’d kind of like a hug right now, just the person
he wants it from isn’t here.
Marco gets up and pads back out to the bedroom.
Tyler lies awake for a long time, talking himself out of calling Jamie to come
get him. He doesn’t though, and nothing happens, nobody messes with him. Marco
barely wakes him up leaving for work in the morning, and Kendra doesn’t kick
him out when she gets up an hour later. She’s got the day off, so she
supervises his finishing the tile.
Neither of them brings up Tyler turning Marco down the night before.
Then Tyler spends the next couple hours getting his hair buzzed on the sides
and fresh-bleached on the roots of his Mohawk, layers of dye put in with rubber
bands and foil bits and he’s not even sure what all Kendra has planned with
this set. He’s learned not to think about the middle-parts of the operation too
deeply, but it feels silly instead of sexy, and he hopes it comes out right, he
hopes really hard that Jamie likes it.
Kendra won’t let him see until after she tips his head back in the kitchen
sink, rinsing out the excess dye and undoing the foil crumples, unwinding the
rubber bands. The water tickles, and he itches the center of his hairline in
the front; his fingertips come away deep purple.
She takes a brush and hair-dryer to his head, scolds him when he winces away
from the heat.
“Okay,” she says at last, “Close your eyes,” And she guides him through the
house to the bathroom, gets the lights on and him in front of the mirror before
she says “Open them.”
Tyler stares, for a long time. This is…this is great. The best he’s ever liked
his hair, and he can’t wait for Jamie to see, can’t wait for his reaction. He
wants…but shit. Jamie is hanging with his brother, and it would seriously break
Tyler’s heart to put a hat over this. He just can’t.
“Thanks,” he tells Kendra, heartfelt. “This is the best. Seriously the best.”
“Glad you like it.”
“Hey, could I get a ride?” he asks, “Out to Oak Lawn?”
“Sure,” she says.
Tyler pulls out his phone, sends a quick text: sorry, can’t do dinner. He
waits, but Jamie doesn’t question it, just asks about riding up to freakin’
Allen the next day, and there’s no way Tyler is ready to be trapped in a truck
cab for an hour with someone who probably won’t like him anyway. He does the
math though; if they’re leaving at eleven, Jamie can’t be home until one at the
earliest.
He gathers his stuff and Kendra slips him a twenty for his work on the tile.
She drops him off and he walks the mile or so left to the Cathedral of Hope,
gets there before the Wednesday night service starts. The ushers greet him on
his way in, and it always feels funny, the sheer amount of welcome he gets
here, the open honest smiles no matter how ratty or worn he’s feeling.
“Tyler!” a familiar voice calls, and he turns to wave to Ron and David.
“Your hair!” Ron says, and waves him over. “Let me see this. My, don’t you look
handsome.”
He preens under the attention, rubs the back of his neck and ducks to hide a
smile. The band starts playing then, soft but a clear call to order.
“Ron has a roast in the oven,” David whispers as Tyler follows them to their
usual seat. “Would you like to join us for dinner, after?”
This isn’t a quick coffee or light lunch. This is coming to their house. Tyler
isn’t afraid of them, by any stretch of the imagination. There’s no threat they
could possibly pose him, but a visit to their home is more intimate than he’s
used to.
He wants to though, that’s the thing.
“Yeah,” he whispers back. “If it’s okay.”
Ron tsks at him and shakes his head, like Tyler is too silly for words.
He’s not sure where he’s sleeping, but he isn’t going to be so rude as to ask
if he has a ride after dinner. He’s got enough for cab fare anyway. Enough to
crash a week at the hotel if he absolutely needed to.
The first hymn starts, and Tyler stands with the rest to sing, his off-key
notes lost in the mass of voices.
The pastor gets up to talk, and she’s got a good voice and sounds like she
really cares, but Tyler kind of zones out when they’re not singing. There’s
talking, and then the band and choir perform, and then the audience gets to
sing again.
Communion makes him nervous, and he doesn’t even know why. The personal
attention maybe, the individual assistants or the pastor praying over each and
every parishioner.
“Do you want us to come with you?” Ron asks as they’re in line for wafers and
grape juice. Tyler’s fingers flex, wanting to have the strap of his backpack to
hold onto, but he left it in their pew. He looks to see if it’s still there,
and it is.
He shakes his head, and steps forward alone when the server calls for the next
in line. He feels a little dizzy, zones out a bit.
“Lord bless this child, keep him and shelter him,” he hears, and he wants to
say he’s no kid, but the wafer is offered to his lips and he takes it, raises
the thimble-sized cup of juice and drinks. He feels like he left something
behind as he walks back to his seat, lighter.
In the car on the way to their home, Ron asks “So what did you think of
tonight’s sermon?”
“I…” Tyler doesn’t really want to admit to not listening much. “I like being
there,” he says, which is the most truthful thing he can think of to say.
David makes a thoughtful noise. “It took me a long time, to be able to sit
there. To figure out that the God they were describing here is no less real
than the one from my father’s church. The one they said condemned men like me.”
Tyler nods, because he’s known a lot of people that had a shitty time with
religion.
“My family didn’t really do the whole God thing,” Tyler explains. He feels like
he’s at risk of rejecting two of the nicest people in the whole world, but he
doesn’t want to lie to them, doesn’t want to make them think he believes stuff
he doesn’t.
“I don’t get the whole…big plan stuff. Like. If God can stop all this bad stuff
happening, then why doesn’t he? And if he can’t, then what’s the fu…frickin’
point?”
“Hmm,” Ron says, thoughtful, as he turns down a narrow street. They’re maybe
three miles from the church, and Tyler’s been paying attention in case he has
to walk it later.
“Tyler, how does it feel for you, being in church?”
It isn’t the kind of question that should be answered too quick, so he thinks
about it before he answers. “I feel. Not-alone, I guess. Like. Surrounded. In a
good way.”
“For some people, that’s enough,” David says. “That peace, and not feeling
alone. That’s what God is to them, and that’s enough. Nobody can tell you what
to believe. You have to find your foundation for yourself. The congregation
there, the building itself, is there as a guiding light. It’s there, for you,
to take whatever you need from it. You don’t have to believe everything to
belong there.”
That’s…maybe what Tyler was so nervous about. That he felt like a fake for
going up for communion when he hasn’t completely bought in.
Ron pulls them up to the front of a sprawling ranch-plan house, tired
architecture that must have been cutting-edge cool in the late seventies, but
looks achingly dated now. The gutters are sagging, the holly bushes in the
front so overgrown they brush the underside of the eaves.
The light is out on the porch, and Tyler gives David his shoulder to lean on as
Ron fumbles for the keys in the dark.
Inside, the house smells like Ben-Gay and mothballs, the warm meaty scent of
the roast distracting Tyler’s stomach from the other odors. The walls are all
wood-paneled, with built-in shelves and a fireplace that covers an entire side
of the room in brick. The couch is golden velvet and there is a collection of
plates depicting scenes of Venice on the wall behind it. It reminds Tyler of
his grandparent’s house, the last time he visited there, warm and welcome and
like a time capsule he can walk around in.
“Hey,” he offers, “Do you have a lightbulb? I can change out that one on the
porch.”
“No, Tyler,” David protests, shaking his head. “I should have done that last
week. You don’t have to; you’re a guest.”
And David can barely manage a curb; there’s no way he should be climbing a
ladder.
“Come on,” Tyler wheedles. “Don’t make me owe you, okay? How many times have
you guys fed me? Leave a guy some pride, yeah?”
Ron passes over a lightbulb and a screwdriver, and David holds the flashlight
while Tyler gets up on a chair and unscrews the cover, passes it down, moth-
filled and dusty and puts the new bulb in. He dumps the dried corpses out in
the yard and puts the cover back on. He’s scared that he hurt David’s pride,
that it was a dick move to usurp David’s role as the man around the house that
gets stuff done, but David looks more relieved than anything when Tyler comes
back down.
Tyler fidgets, wants to ask if they need anything else, but it’s not his house,
not his family, and he hands the screwdriver back over with a shrug and a
crooked smile.
Ron has the table set and the food artfully displayed when Tyler and David get
back in, a big roast in a serving dish, with beets and lima beans and corn on
the side. It’s the most-formal dinner Tyler’s had since he left home, and he
watches careful, does the napkin in his lap like they do and waits for David to
say grace before he starts to fill his plate. It’s like suddenly needing to
speak a language he knew as a child, the patterns coming back to him in little
bursts accompanied by chagrin as he catches his small mistakes after he makes
them.
“So how’ve you been?” David asks, “How’s your sweet puppy?”
Tyler chews and swallows and blots at his mouth. “Good. She’s good. Jamie’s got
her tonight, but she’s getting the hang of not you know in the house.”
Ron picks up then, tells a story about their last dog, five years gone now,
half-blind and not too smart, walking into the same wall every single morning.
It’s nice. Kind of alien, but nice.
“Would you like a ride back to Jamie’s,” Ron asks, after Tyler has helped with
the dishes and wiped down the counters.
Tyler shrugs. Tries to figure out if he does or not.
“Trouble?” Ron asks, gentle.
“His brother’s there tonight.”
“And?” Not challenging, just exploring the issue.
Tyler shrugs, chews on his lower lip and wipes the counter down again. The
front edge is still sticky, and he scrubs it harder. “He knows we’re…together.”
The word doesn’t seem quite right, but there’s nothing better he can think of.
He’s turning down friendly orgasms for Jamie, because Tyler doesn’t want them
from anyone else, and Jamie is telling his brother about being gay, about them.
It’s kind of the biggest deal Tyler’s ever experienced.
Ron waits, and Tyler starts on the cabinet fronts, digging into the ornate
carving with a towel-covered thumbnail.
“I don’t know what to be,” he says at last, and Ron purses his lips. “His
brother—they’re close. Like really close. And if I fuck it up with him then I’m
fucking it up with Jamie. He won’t…”
“Tyler,” Ron cuts in, and Tyler takes a breath. “If he isn’t man enough to
stand up for who he wants, then you deserve a hell of a lot better than this
guy.”
Tyler laughs, but it sounds ragged. Because with all the reasons Jamie has to
drop him, to have gone and found someone better already, his brother’s
disapproval would just be a drop in the bucket. It might be the one that tips
it over, but chances are that it won’t be. He might “deserve” better, but he’s
never going to get it, not in a million years.
“You’re welcome to stay the night,” Ron says. “The guest room might need airing
out, but it’s comfortable.”
Tyler kind of feels like a chickenshit, that he doesn’t want to go and face
Jamie tonight, doesn’t want to get stuck riding up to Allen and back in the
morning.
“If it’s okay,” he says. “Can I make you guys breakfast in the morning?”
Ron sighs like the thought is a massive inconvenience, but there is a glint of
mirth in his eyes.
“I suppose, if you must.”
 
 
===================
“So no Tyler again?” Jordie asks as him and Jamie and Marshall get in the
truck.
Jamie shrugs. “Guess not.” He’s disappointed, but not really surprised. He’s
not sure he would want to go on a road-trip with Tyler’s friends at random, so
he can’t really blame Tyler. Still, it would be easier to deal with Jordie’s
protectiveness if he had Tyler here to meet him.
“He stand you up a lot?” Jordie asks.
“He didn’t stand me up. He said he’d call if he could come, and he didn’t call,
so he didn’t break a commitment. I don’t have him on a leash, Jordie. He
doesn’t have to do anything. He’ll come home when he’s ready, or to take care
of Marshall when I need him to watch her.”
Jordie frowns. “Wait, so he lives with you now? What the fuck, Jamie, you’ve
known this kid for three fucking weeks!”
Jamie winces, because he didn’t mean to say home, not in relation to Tyler. “He
doesn’t live there. He just…”
“Just what?” Jordie asks.
Jamie groans and merges onto the highway.
“Just stays there with Marshall when I’m away. And stays with me sometimes when
I’m here.”
Jordie makes another unhappy noise.
“Thinking with your dick, baby brother.”
“If I’m making a mistake, it’s mine to make,” Jamie reminds him. The rest of
the ride is silent and tense, and Jamie fucking hates it, hates not-talking
with Jordie.
 
===========
Ron and David’s guest room is a floral monstrosity, all hunter green and
burgundy, magnolia painting over the bed, flowers on the bedspread, the
wallpaper border, tucked into vases and draped over the curtain rod in tangled
twists of grapevines and silk plants. It smells flowery too, rose-scented
perfume and baby powder and something else under that. He sleeps with a
burgundy towel between his hair and the ivory pillowcase, just in case his dye
is still rubbing off.
He leaves the door unlocked, not because he would but because he wants to know
if it’s expected. He puts a dime on top of the knob, just to see if there are
strings attached to this kindness.
There aren’t.
He pockets his change in the morning and leaves the sweet-smelling flower-cave
before Ron or David is up for the day, starts the coffee maker and pokes
through the kitchen, looking for ingredients he can throw together for a meal.
He’s pulling pancakes from the griddle when David shuffles out, moving stiffly
and leaning heavier on his cane than Tyler has seen before. “Hey, let me…” he
says, and pulls out the closest chair, cups his hands under David’s elbows like
he’s seen Ron do before.
“’Mornin’,” Tyler says, bright and cheerful like that didn’t just happen.
“There was enough stuff for pancakes. I followed the directions on the box. I
hope…”
“Thank you, Tyler,” Ron says from the doorway, and he sits down across from
David, respects Tyler’s effort by letting him serve their plates out to them.
He watches anxiously as they take the first few bites; he sampled the goods,
but he’ll eat damn near anything and he gets the feeling that they’re used to
things being a particular way.
“Mm, this is good. Thank you,” David compliments.
Tyler shrugs and smiles and turns away to flip the next batch. “Glad you like
them.”
=============
Jamie drops Jordie at the front office at his new club.
“Here,” he says and presses a key to the apartment into Jordie’s hand. “You’ll
have to follow somebody else up the parking garage; Tyler has the other
clicker.”
Jordie glares, but he takes the key.
Jamie leaves him there and heads back south. The argument aches in his chest
and he pulls off in a Chick-fil-A parking lot halfway back to Dallas and sends
Jordie a text: you really dont have to worry. Im ok. I got this.
He’s outside a place with a drive-thru so he might as well get some food. He
orders a couple grilled chicken clubs for himself, and then adds another two,
figuring he’ll eat them if Tyler doesn’t come back before he gets hungry again.
His phone chirps just after he pays, and he reads the message before he pulls
away. big brother. Worrys my job and then dont want to see you hurt but dont
want to fight ether
then dont
dont fuck it up and ill try
Jamie snorts at Jordie’s offer to meet far-less-than halfway. It’s all he’s
likely to get at this point though. He gets the feeling that if Tyler does
screw him over? Jordie won’t let him forget about it until they’re eighty.
===========
“Here, you can just drop me at the store.”
Ron pulls up into a handicap spot in front of the grocery.
“Thanks for the ride,” Tyler says, and he kind of wants to go in for the hug,
but he’s in the back seat and he’s likely to see them again soon. It would just
be weird to make them get out of the car for that. He puts a hand on each of
their shoulders instead, gives them a squeeze and then slips out his door.
“Tyler!” David calls him back, window rolling down and Tyler leans in to hear
what he has to say.
“Love is amazing. Being in love is a wonderful thing. But make sure you have
roots, my boy. Sink them deep so you’ll have something to hold you down when
the world would sweep you away.”
David’s eyes glint wet in the sunlight, and Tyler covers David’s weathered hand
with his own, young and strong.
“This life is too harsh to face alone, Tyler. Know you never have to.”
Tyler can’t help but think of his friend, back in the shelter in Toronto,
bleeding out on the floor because his infatuation had no substance, no
reciprocation. Because there was nothing else to live for.
“Okay,” he says, and it doesn’t sound like nearly enough.
David’s mouth curves into something like a smile. “Call us. Anytime, day or
night. If you need anything, we’ll make sure you get it.”
He pats Tyler’s hand then and shoos him away. “Go see this man of yours. Have
fun.”
Tyler grins. “I will.”
He just needs a couple things from the store first…
 
=================
 
Jamie’s keys jingle as he comes out of the elevator. Marshall yips eagerly and
drags on the leash, trying to hurry him home to the apartment, her little tail
wagging in excitement.
Hope and anticipation swell in his chest, and it’s only been a couple days, but
he fucking missed Tyler. He opens the door as Marshall tries to dig her way
through the crack.
Tyler is there, home, stretched out on his stomach on the couch, eyes closed
and Jamie catches the leash before Marshall can go wake him. He
looks…beautiful. Tight dark shirt, his jeans low around his hips so a strip of
pale skin shows between denim and cotton. Bare feet crossed on the couch’s arm.
And his hair. If Jamie thought it was striking before, it’s absolutely dramatic
now, dark plum at the roots, feathering up to brighter magenta, different
strands lighter or darker, a hint of pink at the tips. It looks like an
experiment Jamie’s science teacher did once, putting different materials into a
fire to watch the colors change.
Marshall whines to get at Tyler, and a smile twitches at Tyler’s lips.
“You fucking faker,” Jamie teases, and Tyler’s nose wrinkles with the effort of
not opening his eyes.
Jamie goes and puts Marshall in her crate despite her protests and walks to
Tyler, crouches beside him.
“Can I…” he asks, and Tyler’s grin goes softer.
“Yeah. Anything.”
Jamie trails his fingers over the fresh-shorn hair over Tyler’s ear, short and
soft as velvet. Tyler’s breath catches, and Jamie wonders how long he’s been
waiting here, if he’s been thinking of this the whole time, Jamie coming home
and touching him. He traces down Tyler’s scalp, down his neck, whisper light.
“Missed you,” Jamie murmurs, not sure if he’s allowed to say that, to feel
that.
Tyler hmms but his smile is undiminished.
Jamie brushes his fingertips over Tyler’s smiling lips and they part, draw him
in. Tyler’s eyes flicker open and he’s done…something. They’re darker,
outlined. Just a little shadow at the base of his lashes but it makes them so
much more intense. If Jamie had ever thought about it, he would have expected
makeup on a man to make him look softer, more effeminate. This…this is anything
but.
Tyler meets Jamie’s gaze as he sucks on his fingers, slow and teasing.
Something feels new between them, but Jamie doesn’t know how to name it. He’s
hard, but not urgently so. Eventually Tyler pulls back. Flicks Jamie’s skin one
last time before he talks.
“I bought some stuff. Some slick. I thought. Maybe you’d like to fuck between
my legs? Like. Not assfucking. Just between.”
Jamie’s not sure of the mechanics of it, but he trusts Tyler, knows he’ll take
charge and keep Jamie from fucking it up.
“Yeah,” he breathes, and Tyler gets hold of the front of Jamie’s shirt, pulls
him down for a shallow teasing kiss.
Then Tyler rolls over and stands up, leads Jamie to the bedroom where a towel
is already laid out over the bare sheets.
“Messy sometimes,” Tyler explains, and Jamie knows he was right to leave the
planning to him.
The ceiling fan light isn’t on, but the room is plenty bright with the sunlight
coming through the blinds. Bright enough for Jamie to see Tyler’s breath hitch
before he unfastens his pants and pulls them down, the way he sucks on his
upper lip before he slips off his shirt.
Tyler is beautiful, and naked. Really really naked. His body is a little too
light for hockey, Jamie thinks, but it’s a work of art, the cut of his muscles,
long and lean, the deep V that leads from the top of his hips to his dick. His
smile shouldn’t be so uncertain. He’s perfect, just perfect. Jamie steps in and
touches him, hands sliding up his sides, over skin so unbelievably soft. Leans
in to press his face to Tyler’s neck, to breathe him in. He knows he’s fucked,
but he can’t help but look for marks, for hickies or scratches or some sign
that someone else has touched Tyler since Jamie saw him last.
Tyler’s lashes hide his eyes as he reaches between them, unties the drawstring
on Jamie’s shorts and let them drop. His hands rest on Jamie’s waist for a
second, and then he looks up, questioning.
Everything Tyler has done has been a risk—the hair, the makeup, being the first
to strip naked. Jamie can’t let him be the only one out there. As scared of
rejection as he is, it still feels cowardly. He nods, even as his stomach does
flips, tries to remember if he had stubble on his chest when he showered this
morning or not, if he should have used Nair then instead of putting it off.
Tyler waits, and fuck fuck fuck, okay. He reaches up behind his neck and gets a
handful of shirt, pulls it off over his head. Tyler looks him up and down, pink
tongue flicking out to touch his bottom lip.
“Yeah,” he breathes, like he likes what he sees. Like he doesn’t think Jamie
looks doughy and thick. His hands reach out; his thumb brushes over a hockey-
bruise on Jamie’s lower rib, light so it doesn’t hurt. Then he leans up and
nuzzles Jamie’s jaw, their bodies bare and touching from chest to crotch and
it’s so much skin that Jamie is dizzy with it.
“C’mon,” Tyler urges, pulling Jamie towards the bed. Jamie has caught on by
now, knows not to put Tyler under him as they sprawl on the mattress. He pulls
the sheet up over them, gets a hand on Tyler’s dick and Tyler humps up into it,
breathy pants slipping past his lips. So quiet, and Jamie has no idea if that
means something.
“Wait,” Tyler whines. “Here. Hang on.” He grabs a bottle from the nightstand
and dumps a huge squirt of it into his hand, spreads his legs and slicks
between them. He rolls on his side away from Jamie, his inner thigh shiny with
slick.
“Okay now,” he says, and Jamie moves closer, and Tyler reaches between his own
legs to guide him in. “Here, here, yeah.” Gets Jamie where he wants him and
closes his thighs around Jamie’s dick.
It’s perfect. So much better than Jamie imagined. Slick and tight. The lube is
cool, but warming up fast.
“Yeah,” Tyler breathes. “Keep it pointed that way. But go for it. Come on. Hard
as you want.” He reaches back with his arm and grabs Jamie’s butt, pulls him in
and then pushes away with his hips. The top side of Jamie’s dick is rubbing
along Tyler’s hole, stroking that firm hump behind his balls, and Jamie tries
to imagine how that feels.
“Hey,” he says and then thrusts again. Wraps his free hand around Tyler’s dick.
“Next time, you do me like this, yeah?” He wants to bite Tyler’s neck, put his
mouth on him, but Tyler’s hair is in his way, bright and stiff.
Tyler makes a punched-out groan and his hips jackrabbit jerk, fast but without
rhythm. Jamie holds on, tries to hold back. It’s ridiculous, how fast Tyler
gets to him, how fucking close he is already.
Tyler grabs the bottle of lube and pours a stream over Jamie’s hand and his own
dick. Grunts at the cold slick of it. “Tighter. Tighter, Jamie.”
Jamie increases the pressure, a little and then more as Tyler moans “Yeah yeah
yeah.” He’s bucking and squirming like he just can’t take it, and a sound like
a sob breaks from his throat as he comes.
“Stop, stop,” Tyler whimpers and Jamie jerks back, would pull away but Tyler’s
got a hand on his ass again, keeping him close. “No, keep fucking. Just no more
hand.”
And yeah, Jamie would guess that he’s beyond sensitive. Puts his hand on
Tyler’s hip and Tyler flexes his thighs, gives Jamie a tight place to fuck
into, slick and hot now. There’s no reason to hold back, no way he can hurt
Tyler with this, and he fucks in with all the strength of a hockey player’s
glutes. Coming coming coming oh fuck.
He collapses when he’s done, drawing close up against Tyler’s back, heedless of
the ridge of prickly hair. His dick is still tucked safe and warm between
Tyler’s thighs, kind of gross and sticky now, and in a minute he’ll get up and
shower, but it feels too good to let go this soon. Feels good to hold Tyler,
skin to skin, not have to worry about how he looks.
He wants to say something stupid and inappropriate, leans in and kisses the
freckle on the back of Tyler’s ear instead.
=================
Tyler lets Jamie snuggle up against him for a while, until the lube and jizz
start to dry and things get unpleasantly sticky.
“I’m gonna…” Tyler says, nodding towards the second bathroom, and Jamie unwinds
his arms from around him, lets him climb out of the bed. He pulls his underwear
on, even with as gross as his legs and ass have to be, gathers the rest of his
clothes and takes them out with him.
Jamie thinks again about that offer to shower together, thinks about Tyler
naked and wet, there within arm’s reach.
He uses the master bathroom’s shower alone. Nairs his chest and shaves his face
while the depilatory does its thing. He puts on a dab of cologne that he picked
up shopping with Jordie.
Tyler beats him to the living room, Marshall out of her crate, sitting on the
floor playing with her when Jamie gets there. His hair is still standing tall,
but he’s washed the makeup off his face, leaving his cheeks pink.
“I walked her before we came in,” Jamie says, coming out of the bathroom. He
wants Tyler to know they’re partners in this. A team. Jamie will pull his
weight whenever he can.
“How’d she do, the last couple of days?” Tyler asks. He looks up at Jamie, and
Jamie smiles.
“Good. Really good. No accidents. I think Jordie wanted to take her with him.”
Tyler looks back down. Flicks Marshall’s little tag with a fingernail and makes
it chime.
“Hey.” Jamie’s voice is soft. “I wouldn’t give your dog away.”
“Our dog,” Tyler corrects, and Jamie sits down beside him on the couch.
“Our dog,” he agrees.
“Besides that, did you guys have a good visit?”
Jamie thinks for a second, and then nods. “Yeah, I guess so.” He hesitates, and
Tyler ruffles Marshall’s fur to give him time to get his words in order.
“He’s being weird. Like. He said he was cool with the gay thing. That I’m still
his brother and all. But. He’s just being weird in ways he never was when it
was girls I was dating.”
Tyler’s shoulder leans lightly against Jamie’s knee and it makes him feel more
grounded.
“I accidentally said you live here,” Jamie admits.
“What?” Tyler looks up and back at Jamie with this startled smile on his face
like he can’t get how Jamie can be so dumb. Jamie can’t really get it either.
“No wonder he’s freaking out. You set him straight though, right?”
Jamie’s shoulders sag. He’s doing this really wrong.
“Can we…can we talk about this?”
Tyler’s grin falters and dies. “About what? How much I stay here? No, hey, it’s
fine, I just thought you wanted…”
“I do.” Jamie cuts in. “I want…the preseason is starting soon and I…I want…”
Jamie scrubs a hand over his face in frustration, knowing this is too soon, too
much.
Tyler pulls Marshall up against his chest and pushes himself up onto the couch
so he’s at the same level as Jamie. She squirms in his arms but he holds her
close.
“You want what?” Tyler asks, small and scared and Jamie fucking hates that he
did that.
“I want you here,” Jamie sighs. “I want to see you when I’m home, and I want
you to be safe when I’m not. I want…to buy you a fucking car so you’re not
bumming rides and…”
Tyler’s shoulder bumps his and Jamie shuts up before he can say something too
stupid.
“I don’t like it here when you’re away,” Tyler says, and Jamie swallows hard.
He can’t even call it safe, not with asshole neighbors around. “I’ll take care
of Marshall, but me and her, we won’t always be here when you’re gone.
Sometimes. Not all the time.”
Jamie nods. This is starting to sound promising. Tyler bumps him again. “You
can’t buy me a car. It’s not like I can get a driver’s license.” If he’s
teasing, then everything will be okay. Jamie didn’t ruin it all.
Jamie lets out a relieved breath, all the tension in his chest breaking at the
same moment.
“I want you to move in,” Jamie says, and it feels safer now, this…can work.
“I’m not moving in,” Tyler says, but his entire posture is relaxed now.
Marshall has finally consented to laying down in his lap. “But I want to see
you. I’ll be around.”
Jamie’s not sure what the distinction is, why Tyler won’t put the same words on
it that he will, because it sounds like the same thing to him.
“So what do I tell Jordie?”
Tyler snorts. “I am not good at family shit.”
Jamie huffs. “Fine. Leave me on my own.”
Tyler shrugs but doesn’t really look apologetic.
“Asshole,” Jamie says without heat.
“Did you bring food?” Tyler asks, and yeah, he must have heard the Chick-fil-
A bag rattle when he was pretending to be asleep on the couch.
“I’d rather go out,” Jamie says, because hours-old fast-food sounds kind of
gross.
Tyler nods, always so easy with food. “Yeah, okay. Let’s go.”
 
=================
“He asked me to move in,” Tyler says over Sunday brunch at Ron and David’s
house. The couple share a significant look.
“What did you say?” David asks, and Tyler shrugs. Eats one of the enormous
beans on his plate. Egyptian food. He’s a fan.
“I said no. Like…” he shakes his head, trying to figure out the words. “He’s
being really dumb. He wanted to buy me a car.”
“Tyler,” Ron says, over-gentle in that way that makes Tyler nervous. “Do you
think he’s trying to buy your affections?”
Tyler thinks about that one, shakes his head. “I don’t even think he was really
offering. Just like saying he wanted to offer? Doesn’t really matter. It’s not
like I can even get a driver’s license anyway, so.”
David frowns. “Tyler. How old are you?”
Ron gives David a reproachful look and David makes a helpless shrug, like he
had no choice but to ask.
Tyler cocks a crooked grin, but he feels his cheeks going warm. “Old enough to
drive. Sheesh. I’ll be eighteen in January. I just…” his smile falters.
“Immigration issues.”
“Really.” David looks both surprised, and like this is a problem he can get his
teeth into. “I wouldn’t have guessed.”
“Everybody says that,” Tyler complains. So far he’s managed not to have to test
the surprise factor against actual authority figures, and he’s hoping he never
has to.
David asks a lot of questions then, and Tyler is just slightly more comfortable
talking about his fucked up past than he is about Jamie going overboard with
everything it is possible to overdo.
“Two years,” David echoes. “How’d you get across the border?”
Tyler has to shrug for this one. He’s not ashamed of who he was then and the
things he did, but he doesn’t think nice people like this need to listen to
that shit.
“It just uh. I was kind of fucked up over a friend of mine trying to check
himself out, up in Toronto. There were these college guys. I dunno. I thought
they were in college. Americans. They shared their alcohol with me, as much as
I wanted, and the next time I was sober I was in Boston.”
“Was there sex involved?” Ron asks, and Tyler’s stomach churns unpleasantly. Is
it fucking written across his forehead?
“I don’t…” he starts.
Ron shakes his head. “You don’t have to talk about this. You never have to talk
about anything you don’t want to.”
Tyler takes a deep breath and pushes his plate away.
“Is your family still in the picture?” David asks, and Tyler shrugs again.
“My parents know where I am. They just can’t deal. Even if they could, I
just…don’t think I could go back there.”
The guys nod like this makes perfect sense, and Tyler feels a little better,
that someone gets it, how hard it is to imagine stepping back into a life so
long gone.
=============
 
Not-living with Tyler is a lot like living together, as far as Jamie can
figure. Tyler is home almost all the time Jamie is. Sometimes he goes out in
the afternoon, having Jamie drop him at that steak house parking lot. Sometimes
Jamie will get home and the place is quiet, Tyler and Marshall out somewhere,
but when Jamie texts, Tyler either gives him an address for Jamie to come get
him or says he’ll be back soon.
September ends with the pre-season games. Jamie has his first NHL fight and
Tyler laughs at his bruises and then kisses them better. Blows him in the dark,
slow and loose and wet. Jamie thinks it’ll never be enough for him to come,
right up until the moment when he does.
Over half the September games are in Florida, but the trip to Colorado reminds
him that winter is still a thing that happens, that is going tohappen, even in
Texas. It isn’t chilly enough for long sleeves, even early in the morning when
Jamie and Tyler take Marshall down to walk, but it will be. The guys have
mentioned the weather, how it’s more sleet and ice than snow, usually, cold and
wet.
By Jamie’s count, Tyler owns two pairs of pants (one cargo, one jeans) and
three shirts (two tank tops and one short sleeve navy blue one that Jamie has
particular affection for). He’ll need more, that’s just a fact. ‘Borrowing’
Jamie’s shirts isn’t going to get him through the winter. At the very least
he’ll need a jacket and a couple sweaters, a good coat for the worst days.
Tyler is taking all the money Jamie leaves for him, but Jamie doesn’t know what
he spends it on. Groceries for some of it, a slowly expanding menu of things
that Tyler feels confident cooking. Jamie doesn’t think there’s any hard drug
use going on, and he hasn’t seen Tyler drunk or hungover since that day he
picked him up at the hotel.
He hasn’t bought clothes though, so Jamie figures it’s up to him. He starts
with a hoodie, gets the size from Tyler’s shirt in the laundry pile and picks a
jacket up at the gift-shop at the iceplex.
“They had these at work, so I got one for you,” he says as he comes in after
practice, into an apartment that smells like salmon broiling in the oven,
grilled onions and red peppers and that spicy-sweet yellow sauce Tyler makes to
drizzle over it all. Ditching fast food with the guys was totally the right
decision.
Tyler gives him a smile that is totally calling bullshit, but it’s a smile and
not Tyler taking offense at Jamie trying to take care of him, so he’ll take it.
He picks up a sweater at a hotel boutique, dawn gray cashmere, thick and so
soft he has a hard time keeping his hands off it even before it’s on Tyler’s
body. The price tag makes him ill, Jesus it’s just yarn, what are they feeding
these sheep, gold? But Tyler’s face when he pulls it on makes it worth every
penny.
The jeans are harder. He asks Tyler to go along with him to Target, for a
couple things to finish out the guest room so Jordie can stay overnight without
sleeping on the couch (if they ever get a gap in their schedules that line up)
and while they’re there he stops by the clothing racks.
“Think these’ll look good on me?” he asks, and Tyler shrugs.
“Can’t know until you try them on.” There’s a hint of a flirt in his voice, the
shadow of a tease.
Jamie hmms and grabs four different kinds of pants in his own size, and then
the same in Tyler’s.
“If I’m gonna play dress-up for you, the least you can do is join me.”
Tyler rolls his eyes, but he takes the stall next to Jamie’s and tries on just
as many pants as Jamie does. He tries to slip them on the reject rack when
they’re done though, and Jamie gathers the three pairs that had fit and puts
them in the shopping cart.
“I like seeing these on you,” he says. “Please. Please let me buy them, okay?”
“Whatever makes you happy,” Tyler says, with only a small serving of long-
suffering indulgence.
Jamie will take the win. Tyler grabs a pack of underwear and one of socks off
the shelf before they hit the checkout line, guards them jealously and pays
with money out of his own pocket.
“It would just be weird,” he tells Jamie as the cashier rings him up, and Jamie
shrugs because agrees, but he would have survived the awkwardness rather than
have Tyler do without something so fucking basic.
============
“Hey, what happened to your gutter?”
“My what?” Ron asks, pausing over the pan of sliced chicken-breast he’s
stirring.
Tyler uses the knife he’s coring apples with to point at the front door of the
house, where the front porch’s gutter has been sagging since the first time he
ever came over. Raises his eyebrows because gutter? Did that used to be a dirty
word in old-timey gay slang?
“Oh,” Ron says, “A branch fell on it last winter. We had a tree service out to
get rid of the limb, but we didn’t have anybody to do the gutter. David was
going to…”
But of course David hadn’t, because David couldn’t, and it would have rankled
to hire someone to do something he felt he should do for his home and his
partner.
“You got a ladder?” Tyler asks, because he got away with changing the light;
maybe David won’t mind him replacing a couple screws either.
=============
“Okay, November third?”
“Practice,” Jordie counters. “Traveling the fourth and fifth, how about the
sixth?”
“That…” Jamie looks over his calendar, marked with practices and games and
publicity events. “That works, actually. Let me make sure it’s okay with
Tyler.”
Jordie is quiet for an ominously long stretch of seconds.
“Yeah. Get back to me on that,” he says, and Jamie hates this, hates that
Jordie feels he needs to protect Jamie from the best thing that’s ever happened
to him (okay, the best thing besides playing in the NHL). The best thing on a
personal level.
“I’m heading home now. I’ll let you know later tonight.”
Jordie sighs. “Yeah. Okay.”
==============
Tyler is playing video games when Jamie gets back home. Marshall gallops over
to greet him, all long legs and big paws.
There is a crock pot simmering on the island that Jamie doesn’t recognize. It
looks too old to have come with this apartment, harvest gold with a pattern of
geometric flowers around the edge, the paint darkened with age nearer to the
heating elements.
“Hey,” Tyler says, eyes still focused hard on the screen. He’ll play out this
life and then quit the game, Jamie knows, so he goes to check out lunch.
Jamie lifts the lid off the pot and steams himself with rich beefy stew-smell.
“That’s ready to eat,” Tyler says, breaks off to focus on the game for a second
and then flicks another glance Jamie’s way. “I had it keeping warm for you.”
“You eat yet?” Jamie asks, and when Tyler answers that he hasn’t, he grabs a
second bowl down and serves out the stew, thick and heavy, more meat than
veggies.
Tyler makes a groan of aggravation at his game and lays down the controller,
finally looks up at Jamie with his full attention.
“Good practice?” Tyler asks, and takes the bowl Jamie hands him, and Jamie
tells him about the new powerplay strategy, how hard everyone is struggling.
“I uh, talked to my brother before I left. We’ve both got the sixth off.”
Tyler stuffs a spoonful of stew in his mouth and waits for Jamie to get to some
point with this.
“He was thinking about driving down. I told him I’d ask you?”
“Ask me what? Should I clear out then?”
“No!” That’s definitely not what Jamie is hinting at. “No. I just thought. If
you were around you could hang out with us, get to meet my family. Maybe we
could all go out and you could fleece him at pool.”
That gets a little smirk, but then Tyler shrugs. “Seriously? Jamie, this seems
like a good idea to you?”
And no, it doesn’t, but not-doing it isn’t working either; Jordie’s animosity
towards a guy he’s never even met has zero chance of going away without
actually meeting him.
“I just think if he meets you, he’ll see how dumb he’s being.”
Tyler bows his head and Jamie feels bad, pushing him to this, but he’s sure,
sure that it’ll make things better. He cups a hand around the back of Tyler’s
neck and presses a kiss to his temple.
“Trust me babe, okay?”
Tyler sighs and some of the tension goes out of him. “Yeah. Okay.”
 
=================
 
“Blow me for luck?” Tyler asks Jamie over breakfast, and Jamie is just glad he
cooked eggs at home instead of eating out.
“You don’t need luck,” he says, and Tyler smirks, shrugs.
“For fun then,” Tyler says, and yeah, Jamie can get with that.
“Sure. Here?” It wouldn’t be the first time Jamie was on his knees for Tyler in
the middle of the kitchen.
Tyler looks at Jamie in a way that makes him feel nearly as naked as actual
nudity. Chews and swallows his last bite of sausage.
“Bed, yeah?”
Jamie…can’t quite get a bead on Tyler’s mood. He doesn’t seem actually horny.
His smile more challenging than welcoming. Like he expects Jamie to tell him no
or something.
Like hell Jamie’s gonna do that.
“Yeah. Bed.” He holds out his hand and Tyler takes it, and Jamie leads him to
the bedroom, sits him down on the edge of the bed and folds to his knees
between Tyler’s feet. He looks up at Tyler’s face and Tyler quirks another
crooked grin.
“Not gonna suck itself,” he says, and Jamie feels the heat rising in his
cheeks, god, so fucking dirty but it gets him, turns him on.
He reaches out and unbuttons Tyler’s jeans, unzips the zipper. Tyler lifts his
ass so Jamie can pull them down.
He’s never seen Tyler soft before, except for after sex. He’s gotten more
experienced at the whole sucking dick thing, but he’s not exactly sure what to
do with a flaccid cock. He rests his palms on Tyler’s bare thighs. Leans in and
breathes on his dick, a soft tickle of air, touches it with his lips, sliding
them along the crinkled side. Flicks his tongue out around the edge of the
foreskin where it completely covers the head.
He looks up and Tyler’s eyes are nearly closed, almost hidden behind the long
sweep of his eyelashes. His lips are parted, his breathing carefully even.
Hands braced on the bedcovers. Jamie licks him again and his dick is starting
to fill out, rising slowly under Jamie’s touch. He nuzzles in again and then
slips Tyler into his mouth, sliding down easily to the root, lets himself be
pushed back by the swelling flesh pushing at the back of his throat.
“Jamie…” Tyler whispers, and Jamie pets his thighs, takes him in again as deep
as he can without choking.
“Jamie, I…” and it’s not a warning that he’s coming. He sounds lost and not
urgent. Jamie pulls off and looks up.
Tyler’s cocky grin is gone, and Jamie wants to hold him, wants to tell him it’s
okay, fuck, Jordie…Jordie isn’t going to make Jamie kick him out. He doesn’t
have that power.
“That thing we did. Where you put your dick between my legs. Can I do that?”
“Yeah,” Jamie sighs, relieved, because this is easy, this he can do. “Of
course. Yeah. How do we…”
Tyler kicks his jeans off where they’d ended up tangled around his feet, stands
and pulls Jamie up.
There is a kiss, brief and soft, and Jamie gets the nerve to murmur, “We
could…you could fuck me. I got condoms…”
Tyler presses lips against Jamie’s neck, shakes his head no.
“I don’t need. Just. Come on. Lay down.” And he puts Jamie on his back on the
bed, helps him get his pants off. Jamie has good legs, hockey-strong and
muscled. Tyler runs his hands up them and then nudges Jamie to roll over on his
stomach.
It’s weird, laying down with his ass hanging out. The squirt of lube is cold on
his skin and Tyler’s fingers pushing between his thighs, getting Jamie slick
where he wants it is kind of alien. He’s glad, a little, that Tyler didn’t take
him up on the offer. He wants, but…awkward. Maybe so much awkward that it
wouldn’t end up as sexy as Jamie envisions.
Then Tyler covers Jamie, his body heat pressing through both of their shirts.
His dick is warm between Jamie’s legs, slipping and sliding there and Tyler
moaning in his ear. Jamie humps down against the bed, and it’s not the right
contact, not warm and slick and skin, but the whole thing feels good, being
under Tyler, having Tyler’s dick rubbing up against him.
Tyler’s mouth closes warm and wet over Jamie’s neck, and his hand slides down
to wrap around Jamie’s dick. There isn’t enough room to stroke, but he holds,
and Jamie slides in his grip.
The stinging, sucking bite just over the back collar of his shirt is what
pushes Jamie over, the sudden wet heat between his thighs. Tyler’s weight
collapses on him and he wraps his arm up to get a hold of Tyler’s shoulder,
hungry for even more contact.
“You okay?” Jamie asks when his heart has finally slowed, when his brain has
started functioning again.
Tyler takes a shuddering breath and nods against his back. “Yeah. Yeah, I
didn’t hurt you, did I?”
Jamie smiles, because nothing could be further from the truth.
“Nah.”
“I…” Tyler starts again, and Jamie waits, gives him the quiet to get the words
together.
“I’m gonna shower,” Tyler says at last, and he pulls away, leaving Jamie
chilled and alone in the bed.
=========
 
“I’ll get that,” Jamie says the second there’s a knock on the door. He’s
closer, though Tyler doesn’t think it was accidental. That’s okay, he needs to
make sure Marshall’s water dish is full anyway. She follows him around like she
can’t stand to be more than two feet away from him, and he scritches behind her
ears while he’s down there. He knows she’s picking up the tension, and he hates
that she’s sad.
“Hey, how’s it going?” Tyler hears, Jordie’s voice bolder than Jamie’s but the
accents the same.
He stands up and wipes the water-dish water off his hands and onto his pants.
Jordie’s a good looking guy, stronger, sharper features than Jamie, a chin that
could stop a freight train. Same terrible hockey flow.
“Good, good,” Jamie says, and Tyler hates that he sounds so tense. “Jordie,
this is Tyler. Tyler, Jordie.”
Tyler steps in and offers his hand. Jordie takes it, his eyes going to Tyler’s
Mohawk, so carefully sculpted and sprayed after Tyler’s shower earlier. A
muscle tics along that strong jawline and Tyler smirks.
Jordie is still looking at Tyler’s hair, so he tips his chin up. “Eyes are down
here, dude.”
Jordie releases Tyler’s hand after one shake, blinks away the fascination with
the Mohawk. “Yeah. That’s uh. Some hair you’ve got there.”
“Thanks!” Tyler says, even though he doesn’t think Jordie meant it as a
compliment. There is a pack of beer in Jordie’s left hand and Tyler slides into
his personal space and liberates two bottles, passes one to Jamie. “Thanks for
the beer too.”
That gets a full frown out of Jordie. Tyler goes around to the kitchen drawer,
digs the bottle opener out and pops the top off his beer. It’s not even noon
yet, but fuck it.
“Hey!” Jordie snaps as Tyler takes a swig. Some kind of micro-brew bullshit.
“There is no way you’re old enough to drink.”
Jamie flinches, “Jordie…”
“Neither’s Jamie,” Tyler reminds him. “You didn’t bring it over to drink in
front of us, did you?”
“I didn’t think…Jesus fuck, how old are you?”
Tyler laughs, sharp and tight. It doesn’t feel good in his throat.
“Why is everybody asking that this week?”
“Jordie.” Jamie says again, sharper this time, steps in between them even
though Tyler has the island in the way already. Jordie’s tense, but Jamie could
grab him if he went over the counter to get to Tyler. He doesn’t think he’s in
any danger of getting hit.
“Jamie,” Jordie says like this is taking all his patience. “What the fuck, how
old is this kid? I’m just looking out for you. God damn it, are you ready to go
to jail over this?”
“Hey!” Tyler’s smile is gone now, just gone. “I wouldn’t fucking… I’m legal,
okay? Nobody’s going to jail, what the hell.” He turns to Jamie, his big dark
eyes, so fucking vulnerable.
“I wouldn’t do that to you,” he says, softer, just for Jamie. “I wouldn’t fuck
this up for you.”
“I know,” Jamie says, and Tyler thinks he’s every bit the dumbass his brother
is implying, to trust like this, to trust someone like Tyler, because Tyler
would, he just hasn’t.
He tips the beer into the sink, listens to it gurgle down the drain. Watches
Jordie’s eyes and sees some of the fight go out of them. He quirks his eyebrows
and Jordie is the first to look away.
“So uh, I thought we could play some video games, or there’s this place with a
pool table that Tyler showed me,” Jamie puts in, awkward in the role of peace-
maker.
Tyler tosses the empty bottle in the trash and gets a bottle of Gatorade out of
the fridge instead. Gestures their guest ahead of him to the couch.
“Video games. Sure,” Jordie says, and he sits and Jamie sits.
Tyler wishes he hadn’t taken Marshall out earlier so he’d have an excuse to get
out for a second.
They play.
Jamie keeps trading out with Jordie or Tyler, keeping them together on the
couch like proximity is going to make them friends.
And that’s…he can live with this. Jordie doesn’t like him, but Tyler’s not sure
he’d like a boy like him dating someone he cared about either, so that’s fair.
The round on screen ends and the scores pop up and Tyler beat Jordie by a dozen
kills. “Yeah, baby!” he congratulates himself because nobody else is doing it.
He gets up and stretches and Marshall whines at the door.
“I’m gonna take her out,” he says, and Jamie gets up from the side chair, joins
him at the door and starts pulling on his shoes.
“I’ll come with you,” he says, and Tyler feels a little better, that he isn’t
hanging back to talk about Tyler behind his back.
“Yeah,” he says, and smiles as he pulls on his sweater. “Cool.”
“We’ll be right back,” Jamie tells Jordie, “Make yourself at home.”
Tyler snaps the leash to Marshall’s collar and Jamie steps close to him as they
go out into the hallway, elbows brushing.
“Thanks,” he murmurs, “For trying.”
Tyler shrugs, because he really is, it just seems stupid to accept gratitude
when his efforts are not yielding the best results.
“Jamie,” he says as the elevator doors close. Jamie cups the back of Tyler’s
neck in his big hand, leans in so their foreheads touch.
“Food when we get back?” Jamie asks, and Tyler sighs. His stomach is more
knotted than hungry, but it’ll be something to do with his hands, something to
distract Jordie from any fuckups Tyler might make.
“Yeah. Yeah, whatever sounds good to you guys.”
==========================
They go out to eat and then to a place Tyler knows about that has more than one
billiard table. It’s a fucking train wreck. Tyler offers Jordie a small bet to
start and just goes from there.
“Don’t,” Jamie warns them both. This is dumb. So fucking dumb.
“C’mon, Jamie,” Tyler cajoles, “It’s just a game between friends. The wager’s
just to make it interesting.”
“Jordie.” Jamie says, tries to get his attention, but Jordie shakes his head.
The worst of it is, Jamie is pretty sure Jordie knows just how badly he’s
outclassed here. Tyler keeps the games vaguely tight, like if Jordie had a
spectacular run of luck he might be able to tie it up, win his money back, but
the ease of the shots Tyler makes and the blatantness of the ones he misses are
beyond obvious.
“Tyler!” Jamie hisses when Jordie goes to the ATM. Tyler’s lazy smile doesn’t
go near his eyes.
“You think he’ll stop if I tell him to?” he asks, and no. Jordie is gonna get
pissy and refuse to quit.
Jordie is about three hundred dollars in the hole when Tyler stretches, shakes
his head at Jordie’s instance of double-or-nothing. “Nah. I’m done.” He peels
his ten off the top of the stack of bills and presses the rest to Jordie’s
chest, the insult as clear as his ‘missed’ shots earlier.
“That was fun,” he says, in a tone that makes it clear it was anything but.
Turns his back on Jordie to go put his stick back on the wall.
Jordie closes his hand over the cash, but he’s as angry as Jamie has ever seen
him, eyes dark and frowning heavy.
Jamie is getting an ache in his jaw from grinding his teeth.
“You guys hungry?” he asks, desperate for anything to put an end to this.
“We just ate,” Tyler reminds him, and yeah, it was barely two hours ago.
“Get in the truck,” Jamie growls at them both. Fucking assholes. How did he
think this was a good idea?
 
=========
The driving range seems like the safest place for Tyler and Jordie to be in
proximity. Neither of them is good enough at golf that it becomes a
competition. Jamie takes the station between them, and there isn’t much chatter
as they tee up and swing.
Tyler is…bad. Like missing the ball entirely bad, but he’s laughing about it.
Even Jordie relaxes a little at Tyler’s flailing. It’s a good thing. Jamie was
going to drag them to paintball next.
“Here,” Jamie groans. “You’re holding the club wrong.” He rearranges Tyler’s
fingers on the grip, pinky of his right hand laid over the index of his left.
“Oh,” Tyler says. “That feels. Weird.”
“Take a swing,” Jamie urges, and Jordie leans on his club to watch.
“Too much torque,” Jordie says after Tyler’s practice swing.
Jamie sees Tyler freeze, take a long look at Jordie like he’s trying to tell if
this is helpful or chirping.
Jordie mimics Tyler’s swing. “You’re getting too twisted here. Like your hip is
coming around too early and your weight is shifting late.”
Tyler sucks his lower lip between his teeth and then nods. “Yeah. Okay.”
It’s easier after that. They shoot balls for an hour or so, and then Jordie and
Jamie are hungry again and Tyler can always eat. Driving home to walk Marshall
in between venues eats time too, and Jamie loves his brother, is starting to
think maybe he more-than-likes Tyler, but he’s glad to see the sun going down.
He drives them back to the apartment, Tyler squeezed into the center of the
bench seat between Jamie and his brother.
“Beer?” Jordie offers, when he gets his own out of the fridge. Jamie is just
about to say no, but Jordie isn’t asking him.
“Sure,” Tyler says, cautious, but he takes the bottle Jordie offers. Jordie
raises an eyebrow, and Jamie shrugs, holds out his hand for one too.
They hang around then, watch a movie, Tyler in the chair and Jamie and Jordie
together on the couch. Jamie tries to remember Tyler touching him at all since
Jordie got there, and besides the inevitable bumping around in the truck and
the contact in the elevator, there hasn’t been any. He watches Tyler watching
the TV and wonders if he should go over there, try to make room on the chair
for both of them. If he could tell Jordie to switch without it being weird. If
not-touching is what Tyler wants or what Tyler thinks he wants.
Halfway into the movie, Tyler gets up and puts Marshall’s water dish in the
sink, and when it’s over, he goes to get her leash. Jamie goes down with him
again, fingers tugging on the cuff of Tyler’s sleeve, brushing his waist,
slipping in between Tyler’s and Tyler allows it, grips Jamie’s fingers tight
until the elevator opens on the ground floor.
The wind is blowing and the temperature dropping. “Should have worn my
sweater,” Tyler complains, but Jamie is kind of glad that he didn’t, that he
steps into the lee of Jamie’s body and stands just a little too close for
straight dudes.
They get back upstairs and Jordie has already gone into the guest room, and
Jamie figures that’s for the best. “Night,” he calls at the door, and Jordie
grunts from inside. His schedule is just as grueling as Jamie’s, so he doesn’t
take offense.
That just leaves…
“So uh. Am I on the couch or what?” Tyler asks, and Jamie shakes his head.
“No. Not unless you want…”
Tyler takes a couple slow breathes and then nods, decisive, his hair bobbing at
the motion. “Yeah. Okay. Bed it is.”
So they get Marshall settled and go in, stripping down to boxer briefs and t-
shirts. Jamie pulls the blankets back and crawls between the sheets and Tyler
joins him there, sliding their legs together, face to face, chest to chest. His
fingers slip under the bottom of Jamie’s shirt; he presses his palm down over
Jamie’s side, over the love-handles Jamie has had since he was twelve.
“Sorry I’m being a dick,” Tyler whispers in the dark, and Jamie nuzzles in,
brushes their lips together.
“Didn’t think it would be so shitty,” he admits. “If I thought…I wouldn’t have
asked,” he sighs. “Breakfast tomorrow and then he’s gotta drive back up to
Allen for a game.” Jamie has a game too. He thinks some quality time is in
store, either after the game if Tyler’s still awake, or the next morning,
maybe.
Tyler kisses him back, lips and tongue flicking against Jamie’s, then trailing
down his throat.
“We can’t…” Jamie starts to say, but of course they can. Jordie won’t be dumb
enough to come in unannounced, and he can sure as hell fool around with his own
boyfriend in his own apartment.
“Think you can be quiet?” Tyler whispers. He frees Jamie’s dick and then
slithers down under the covers.
=======
Jamie thinks he’s the first one up in the morning. Tyler is sound asleep in his
arms, and Marshall hasn’t whined yet. He figures he’s awake though, and should
make a token attempt to play host for his brother.
He closes the bedroom door quietly behind him, wanting Tyler to have as much
peace and quiet this morning as possible. Jordie is just coming in the front
door though, Marshall’s leash in one hand, a cup of Starbucks in his other.
“Your coffee maker is broken,” Jordie complains, and yeah. There’s coffee
everywhere, covered in a layer of paper towels across the counter and part of
the floor.
Jamie groans. “There’s a thing. To hold the filter.” He goes to start doing a
better job of cleaning up and Jordie drops his keys and stuff in the island
bowl and grabs a towel.
“He is cute,” Jordie says, dabbing at a rivulet of coffee that’s dried on the
granite already. “Never figured you to go after someone so flashy though.” It’s
the right mix of concern and brotherly chirping.
“He’s…” Jamie starts, but the door to the bedroom opens then, Tyler coming out
with his hair all crumpled to the side and wiping the sleep out of his eyes.
“Hey,” Tyler says, adorably rumpled. He ended up in one of Jamie’s shirts after
his was used in the cleanup last night, and it hangs loose through the
shoulders. He looks young and vulnerable, and if Jordie fucks with him, Jamie’s
just done. He’s not sure what he’ll do if Tyler is the one to start the
fucking-with though. Cry, maybe.
Tyler bumps into him on the way to the coffee maker, stares at the empty pot
like he’s waiting for it to fill. Jamie chuckles and nudges to the side so he
can grab the grounds-filled filter-holder.
“It did the thing,” Jamie says, and Tyler grunts, turns around and wanders back
to the bedroom.
=========
Fugh. Ugh. Morning, no coffee, Jordie. No, just no.
There are many things Tyler thinks himself capable of, but that combination is
beyond him. He’s seen the cleanup from that stupid coffee maker before, and
it’ll take like twenty minutes to clean it out and get it running again, and
the sight of the Starbucks cup on the counter has triggered a caffeine craving
he’s having a hard time denying. He pulls on a pair of Jamie’s sweats on over
his boxer briefs and goes back out.
Jordie and Jamie are still working on cleaning up the mess. “I’ll bring you
back a cup,” Tyler tells Jamie so he doesn’t waste time starting the maker
brewing a batch of mediocre coffee when there’s something better downstairs and
across the block. Jamie calls back a distracted thanks.
Tyler reaches for Marshall’s leash but Jordie says “Already took her.”
Tyler grunts at that, the most civil expression he can manage. Fuck why does it
feel so early?
He grabs the cash out of the bowl and pulls on his shoes by the door. The hall
is quiet except for the health-nut neighbor couple coming back from their
Saturday morning run. They give him nods of greeting, and it feels kind of
neat, to have been in one spot long enough that people recognize him, to be
viewed like he belongs in a place like this.
He goes to the elevator lobby and leans on the button until it rattles its way
up.
He gets all the way to the ground floor, and this is dumb. It makes no sense.
Like yeah, they need coffee now, him and Jamie, but of all the stuff the Stars
house-dresser got for this apartment, the coffee maker is just shitty. Jordie
has a better machine than they do. He pushes the button to go back up. He’ll
just run back in and get some money out of his cache and get them something
that actually does its damn job while he’s at it.
==========
 
Jordie stares at the door, long after Tyler closes it behind him.
“Did that just fucking happen?”
“Huh?” Whatever Jordie’s talking about, Jamie didn’t see it.
“Your boyfriend just—took my money and left.”
“What?”
Jordie gestures helplessly at the bowl where his keys and wallet still lay and
the door.
Jamie sighs. “Was it loose in there, or in your wallet?”
Jordie frowns. “What does that matter? It wasn’t his.”
“I’ll pay you back,” Jamie says, and Jordie frowns deeper.
“So what. He takes money from you without asking like a regular thing?”
Jamie takes a slow, measured breath, and tries to keep his temper, tries to see
this from Jordie’s side.
“Look. He’s…in some fucked up circumstances. I leave money in the bowl. If he
needs it, he takes it. So he never has to ask. So it’s not a thing.”
“You give him money,” Jordie says, careful, each word enunciated. “And he has
sex with you.”
“No!” Jamie says. “I mean, I do, and he does, but.”
“Jamie, there’s a fucking word for that. You can’t seriously think…”
“That he likes me?” Jamie’s voice gets louder and louder. “Is that so hard to
believe? That someone like Tyler, he likes me and wants to be with me?”
“Then why does he take your money, Jamie? Why would he use you like that?”
“Because he doesn’t have any!” Jamie is yelling now. “Fuck you! Jesus, would
you be saying this if he was a girl?”
“I don’t care that he’s a guy! You deserve better!” Jordie yells back. “You
could do so much better!”
“I don’t want better! I want him! He makes me happy, Jordie. If he was. If. I
would pay ten times what I’ve given him, Jordie. Twenty times and call it a
bargain. He makes me feel good in ways I never have, not once. Can you
understand that? I…” and he won’t say the rest, not to Jordie before he tells
Tyler.
“Why the hell can’t you just let me be happy? This is none of your fucking
business.”
“You’re living with a god-damn hooker, Jamie!” Jordie yells.
The coffee maker is in the air before Jamie knows he’s touched it, smashing
against the wall by the door. Marshall yelps and runs behind the couch and
Jordie stands his ground.
“So fucking what if I was?” Jamie shouts back. “So fucking what? You know what?
You get the hell out of my house, Jordie. You don’t get to fucking say that
about him.”
Jamie is dimly aware that his phone is chirping an incoming text, but he’s too
pissed to look at it, too far beyond anger. If this was on the ice he would
have dropped the gloves already; there would be blood by now, the satisfying
sting where his knuckles smashed against someone else’s face.
“Jamie…” Jordie starts, like there’s a way to apologize for this.
“Get out,” Jamie tells him again. “Get your shit and get the hell out.”
Jordie’s anger starts to fade, replaced by apology, worry.
Jamie turns his back on him, can’t stand to look at him right now. Fuck. He
goes over to the couch, but Marshall shrinks back from him, shaking like a
leaf, her tail tucked tight under her body.
“Oh baby,” he says, imitating Tyler’s voice with her when she cringes during a
thunder storm, “I’m sorry baby, I’m sorry. You’re okay, come on Marshall, come
here, baby, shhh, shhh.”
He crouches down beside her and she slinks into his touch, and Jordie doesn’t
get it, how much Tyler and Marshall both deserve better than him.
Jordie goes into the room he slept in, gathers his clothes from yesterday and
pauses at the door.
“Jamie,” he tries again, but Jamie won’t look up.
“Shut up and go, Jordie,” he says, still in the soothing baby-voice he’s using
with Marshall.
Jordie sighs and goes and Jamie sits and waits. Tyler will be back in a minute.
He needs to get his shit together. Needs to get up and start cleaning the mess
he made so Tyler won’t have to.
He waits, and Marshall eventually calms down. He lets her climb in his lap.
Tyler…still isn’t there, and he has a moment of dread, that Jordie ran into him
in the hall, that he said something, did something.
Shit.
He gets up and he’s going to go out, to make sure Jordie’s car is gone, and
then he remembers the text message and he should check that, just in case.
Tyler’s name comes up on the screen, and he feels a wave of relief, before he
sees the message itself and his heart cracks in his chest.
FUCK YOU
I LOVED YOU ASSHOLE
 and then as he reads, another comes up,
FIND YOURSELF A REAL HOOKER
I’M DONE
FUCK YOU
FUCK YOU
FUCK YOU
Oh god, oh god shit, no.
wait he sends back as fast as he can type.
wait please it wasn’t that
I didn’t mean
I don’t think you are
Please please
Come home so I can talk to u
I kicked jord out
Please let me talk
I’m sorry
Fuck
He stuffs his feet in his shoes and runs for the door when there’s no reply.
How far could Tyler have gotten? How far could he go in that time? Should he
grab the truck or run on foot? Should he bring Marshall, so Tyler will listen,
so Tyler will have something he cares about to stay for?
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Jamie hits the stairs, taking them down two at a time and then jumping over the
last six of each flight.
He steps out in the Texas sun, bright even before ten in the morning in
November.
People are walking on the sidewalk, in and out of the little boutiques that
make up the bottom floor of the apartment complex, going about their lives like
Jamie’s didn’t just fall apart.
Tyler is nowhere in sight.
===============
***** Chapter 2 *****
Jordie’s words are sharp, even through the apartment door, and Tyler freezes
with his keys in hand, his heart pounding.
“Then why does he take your money, Jamie? Why would he use you like that?”
“Because he doesn’t have any!”
Tyler has never heard Jamie yell before. An angry growl, that time he cornered
Tyler about leaving a sick dog in his place. Not full-out shouting. Not like
this.
“Fuck you! Jesus, would you be saying this if he was a girl?”
“I don’t care that he’s a guy! You deserve better than this guy! You could do
so much better!”
Tyler’s breath catches in his chest like a ball of barbed wire. He waits, for
Jamie to get it, that Jordie is right, that Tyler is a shitty place-holder for
the person who will be a good partner to Jamie.
What he gets instead is so much worse.
“I don’t want better! I want him!” Jamie’s voice falls, and Tyler misses a few
words. “I would pay ten times what I’ve given him, Jordie. Twenty times and
call it a bargain. He makes me feel good in ways I never have, not once! Can
you understand that? I…”
The keys fall out of Tyler’s hand, onto the door mat, and he can’t think, can’t
breathe. He reaches down and picks the keys up by blind instinct, fingers
shaking.
Jamie…Jamie thinks he’s a fucking hooker. All Tyler’s done, all he’s fucking
shown Jamie, and he thinks this is about money? It is too much and he takes a
step back from the raw hurt of it.
He finds himself at the elevator and pushes the button on instinct. He has to
get away. Has to…something. Anger wells up in him, brighter and clearer than
the pain, the grief.
He pulls out his phone and texts Jamie,
FUCK YOU
I LOVED YOU ASSHOLE
The elevator comes and he steps in, fingers still on the keys.
FIND YOURSELF A REAL HOOKER
I’M DONE
FUCK YOU
FUCK YOU
FUCK YOU
The elevator opens and he runs out, dodges around some dude walking a
Pomeranian. His heart pounds so heavily he’s dizzy. He skips through traffic
against the light, gets honked at by some asshole in a BMW.
His phone buzzes, then again in his pocket.
He doesn’t. Doesn’t know what Jamie could say that would make this better, but
he looks anyway.
wait
wait please it wasn’t that
I didn’t mean
I don’t think you are
Please please
Come home so I can talk to u
I kicked jord out
Please let me talk
I’m sorry
An onslaught of messages, and the icy burn in his chest turns to a crushing
ache, because he fucking loves Jamie. God he’s so stupid; he’s fucked up so
bad, letting himself get happy, get comfortable. He wants to go back now, wants
to let Jamie lie to him and pretend it’s better.
But that’s all it would be, for both of them. Tyler pretending Jamie cares
about him. Jamie pretending he can buy Tyler’s love.
He’d be a whore for real then.
It would break him. Of all the things he’s lived through, all the things he’s
done and had done to him, he’s made it out alive, but this. He won’t. He can’t.
He’s making a noise.
People are staring at him.
He’s given Jamie the power to destroy him, and he needs to take it back.
There’s a brick wall beside him, part of the next block’s brownstones. He
turns, and spikes his phone into the base of it, flinches back from the hail of
broken plastic as it shatters. He knows, as he does it, that he needs that
fucking phone, but he needs to stop listening to Jamie more, needs to get away
as clean as he knows how. If he goes back Jamie’s soft voice and Bambi eyes
will get him all turned around again. Easier this way, to be free of his hope.
He runs. Hands empty, nothing, nothing at all to start over from.
Stupid. So, so stupid.
He runs, but eventually he has to stop for breath. His heel hurts, where his
shoe is rubbing it. He doesn’t have on socks. He’s wearing Jamie’s pants and
shirt, and shoes that had needed replacing before he even met Jamie.
He orients himself, and he’s heading vaguely in the direction of Oak Lawn. And
that’s…that’s no good. It’s too early; the neighborhood doesn’t wake up until
well after noon on a Saturday morning. Even if he waits, that place has nothing
for him but the opportunity to fuck or get fucked up, and as much as he wants
that, he knows it’s a hole he’ll never dig himself out of if he starts.
He pushes off of the wall he’s leaning against and turns his steps more
northward. Towards a once-fancy neighborhood of older houses, the sheltering
canopies of live oak trees. Towards a door he hopes will always be open to him.
He knows where he’s going. It’ll take him half the day to walk there, but he
has a destination.
 
============
 
Jamie searches, but there’s no sign of Tyler. He questions pedestrians on the
streets, looking like a weirdo with his hair unbrushed and terror in his eyes.
Nobody’s seen a boy with a pink Mohawk, with gentle eyes and a sweet smile, a
wicked smirk and a soft touch. Nobody’s seen his Tyler.
He calls, but Tyler’s phone goes straight to message, like Tyler has turned it
off.
He goes back up to the apartment and gets Marshall out of her crate. She’s
still jumpy, not quite trustful of him, but she lets him pick her up and carry
her to the truck.
He drives then, his phone in the cup-holder by his knee.
Tyler doesn’t reply. Not once.
The alarm goes off, that he should start his pre-game nap, and he ignores it.
He drives by that steak house where Tyler sometimes gets dropped off, but
there’s nothing on the other side of it but a church, some businesses that he
can’t imagine Tyler being interested in (car rental, printing, a restaurant
supply place) and then a vast sprawl of rundown little houses.
He can’t go door to door so he crisscrosses a few times and then turns back,
tries to figure what path Tyler would take if he was headed to Deep Ellum. He
stops at a red light and wants to pound the steering wheel. He would, except he
brought Marshall and he’ll be damned if he scares her again.
He has to stop for gas, when he can’t find Tyler in Deep Ellum, when he isn’t
at the pool hall or the burger joint. When he isn’t in Oak Lawn, in the Thai
restaurant he suggested, or at the pizza place with the creative toppings.
He goes back to the apartment, parks on the street so he can snap Marshall’s
collar on and let her walk. They go back up the elevator, trying to retrace
Tyler’s steps, but there’s no sign.
His alarm goes off again, telling him to wake up. He carries Marshall over the
broken glass from the coffee pot and puts her in her crate. She’ll probably
piss on the cage floor before he can get back so he throws an extra towel down
for her. That’s all he has time for before he changes into his game-day suit
and heads out again.
He watches both sides of the road, hoping against hope that he’ll stumble into
Tyler again, find him by dumb blind luck.
Wherever Tyler’s gone, it isn’t between the apartment and the AAC.
He hurries into the changing room nearly-late, gets a reproachful look from
coach and captain both. He knows he looks like shit, ragged and worked up. He
slips his jacket off of his shoulders and hangs it up. Other guys are in most
of their gear. He’ll be lucky if they don’t scratch him. He keeps his head down
and steps out of his pants. Unbuttons his shirt and puts it away.
He sees an incoming body out of the corner of his eye, and then there’s a
stinging thump on the back of the junction of neck and shoulder, right…right at
the place where Tyler bit him yesterday morning, where Tyler put his mouth when
he was fucking between Jamie’s legs. The place Tyler may never fucking see or
touch or kiss again in Jamie’s life.
“Your boyfriend a vampire, Benny?” Neal chirps, and Jamie turns, grabs him by
the chest pads and slams him back into his stall.
“Don’t you fucking…” it’s on the tip of his tongue, Don’t you fucking talk
about him, but he can’t. They don’t know. Neal doesn’t know. He’s just trying
to get under Jamie’s skin.
It’s working.
“Don’t you fucking touch me,” he says instead, and it feels dumb, hollow.
They’re hockey players, they touch all the damn time. Neal’s eyes go wide, and
Jamie thinks Oh shit no, not now.
“Hey!” Modano is having none of this shit before a game, and Jamie’s cheeks
burn with shame. “Save it for the other guys!”
Jamie resolves to shove it down and play the fucking game. He plays the first
period in a daze, wondering if Tyler has called, if he’s texted. He gets bumped
down to the third line, and can’t even protest it. He knows his play is off; he
just can’t find his focus.
Larson lines up on his left, gives him a what the hell is wrong with you
glance, but he’s got his own game to worry about. John Scott sidles up to the
line, big and ugly, grinning gap-toothed down at everybody, but Larson
especially.
“Hey!” he calls at Larson, “Hey. How many guys you blow to get on this team?”
Larson ignores him, and Jamie tries to breathe, to not hear the things the guy
is saying. He out-weights Larson by a good eighty pounds. Jamie’s a little
closer but the guy is a monster-- taller, bigger, longer reach.
“I gotta big dick. Since suckin’ is all this team does, you catch me after the
game,” Scott tells Larson and Jamie just loses it, loses the battle with sorrow
and fear and anger that he’s been carrying since he got Tyler’s text.
“Hey!” Jamie’s stick hits the ice; he gives his gloves a little shake to get
them loose.
“You lookin’ to fight a faggot, I’m right here.” He shoves against Scott’s
chest and the man is like a wall-- no give at all.
This is the dumbest thing he’s done in a game in his fucking life, but he feels
the adrenaline rising, feels like he’s here for the first time all night.
Scott blinks at him. “Like for real?” He drifts back, away from Jamie’s anger.
Jamie’s momentum stumbles and he’s left with no opponent, no direction. He
frowns, picks up his stick.
“Yeah for real. Fuck you.”
Scott shrugs. “My cousin’s gay.”
The whole thing is surreal. Both lines are looking at him, and if Scott had
just fought him none of this would be happening. The puck drops and Jamie plays
his shift. He can feel it though, the whispers going through the Stars bench,
and the Wild’s. The feel of eyes on him until it feels like the entire stadium
is turned his way.
The news is out before the game is over.
====================
Tyler is limping by the time he gets to Ron and David’s house, blisters on the
backs of both heels and on the sides of his pinky toes. He’s sweaty and his
hair is sticking to his forehead. The back of his neck and scalp have gotten
enough sun to feel tight and hot.
Ron and David’s boat of a car is at the curb, and Tyler breathes, breathes free
again for the first time since he backed away from Jamie’s door.
The last shred of pride that he has disintegrates as he knocks, to be standing
there with nothing but the clothes on his back when Ron opens the door.
“Tyler?” Ron reaches for him, his gentle eyes filled with concern.
“I’m not a whore,” Tyler says, throat dry and voice cracking. “I’m…I’m not.”
His vision blurs and Ron draws him into the cool recess of the house.
“Oh, Tyler,” Ron says. “No, of course not, but even if you were…” like it
wouldn’t matter to them, if he’d been selling his body, that they’d still
welcome him in.
David comes to the arch that leads down the hall to his den, cane in hand.
“What’s happened?”
“He…” Tyler gulps for air and Ron sits him down on the gold velvet couch.
“Wait. Water first and then you can tell us.”
Tyler is so grateful, for the moment to get his head together, to find the
words to describe the hurt.
Ron passes a tall glass with a harvest-gold floral pattern painted around the
base into his hands and Tyler takes a sip, hands shaking.
“Better?” Ron asks, while David stands like he’s waiting for a villain to go
beat up.
“He…” Tyler starts again, and maybe the chance to compose himself was for
nothing. “He thinks I’m a hooker. That he’s paying me.”
“Jamie?” David asks, and Tyler nods.
“Yeah. He. You were right. Thinks he’s ‘buying my affections.’”
“He said this to you?”
Tyler can’t meet David’s eyes.
“Jamie. Him and his brother. They were yelling. Fighting. He said. He didn’t
want a boyfriend. Wanted me. Because. Because I’m cheap.”
Ron sits down on the couch beside him. Tyler is all sweaty. He should take a
shower, but he has nothing to change into.
“I’ll kill this boy,” David announces, and Ron sighs.
“Kill him tomorrow; Tyler needs us now.”
He puts an arm around Tyler’s shoulders, slow like he thinks Tyler might shrug
him off, might not want to be held. If so, he’s wrong, so wrong, and Tyler
turns and leans into his bony shoulder, that high noise slipping from his
throat again, a whine he can’t stop. Ron rubs his back. David disappears and
comes back with a damp towel for Tyler to wipe his face with.
It’s just starting to sink in, how completely fucked he is. No backpack, no
supplies, no phone, no money at all. He chokes that back, because he didn’t
come here for cash and clothes, he came for…
David’s weathered hand rests on Tyler’s shoulder, and he knows the emotions-
thing isn’t really in David’s wheelhouse, but he is trying, for Tyler, to give
him some comfort on this shitty shitty day.
“Where are you staying?” David asks, and Tyler can only shake his head.
“Here then,” Ron decides, “For a few days at the very least. When did you eat
last?”
It’s so easy, to let someone else make a choice for him. “Last night,” Tyler
says. Close to eighteen hours ago, and he just walked a half-marathon to get
here from Jamie’s. No wonder he feels hollow.
Ron stands up and offers him a hand, and Tyler takes it, but even as bone-tired
as he is he won’t let Ron lift any of his weight.
“Take a quick shower and I’ll warm some soup,” Ron says, and he’s like the mom
Tyler always wished his could have been.
He goes to the bathroom, and nothing in his life has felt as good as slipping
those sneakers off of his feet. After he’s clean he’ll ask for some Band-aids
and ointment.
There is a soft knock on the door, and when he opens it, David hands him a
stack of folded clothes.
“They’re not fashionable like you young people wear, but they should get you
through the night.”
Tyler takes the pile, baby blue button-down pajamas and a soft terrycloth robe.
“Thanks,” he says, and he isn’t sure what he did to deserve these people, their
kindness, but he is so glad to have it. “For…thanks.”
David smiles a little sadly and nods. “Ron’ll have the soup when you’re done.
Let us know if you need anything.”
Tyler closes the door again and strips off his (Jamie’s) shirt and sweats.
There is a clack as the pants hit the tile and he frowns, reaches down and
picks them up again. Keys. Fuck. He doesn’t. Can’t. Not right now. He stuffs
them in the medicine cabinet to look at later, to try to figure out what the
hell.
He steps into the shower, washes off the sweat and salt and dust. Pours shampoo
in his hand and scrubs the product out of his hair, watches the soft pink swirl
of faintly-dyed water swirl down the drain.
The fight leaves him, and he’s just tired. He dries off and puts on Ron’s
pinstriped pajamas and wraps the robe around himself. Pads barefoot to the
kitchen.
Ron has a place set for him at the table when he gets there, and he eats
staring into space. Ron sits across from him, not pushing him to talk, but not
leaving him alone either.
“You can…whatever you were doing before I came,” Tyler says, feeling guilty,
and Ron shakes his head.
“I was just watching my game shows on television,” Ron tells him, “But if you’d
rather I leave…”
Tyler winces. “It’s your kitchen,” he says, and Ron goes and gets a tea kettle
out of a cabinet and puts some water on to boil. By the time Tyler has gotten
the soup down, there is a cup of herbal tea in front of him.
Tyler drinks, mostly to occupy his hands, to have a reason not to talk. When
he’s done, it’s still early, but…
“Is it okay if I go sleep?” he asks, and Ron nods.
“Of course. We were going to go to church tomorrow, but one of us could stay,
or you could come with us.”
Tyler shakes his head.
“I don’t think I’ll be up to it.”
“Okay,” says Ron, easy as anything. “We’ll see you in the morning, then. If you
want to, we can come get you after church and we’ll go out to lunch like old
times.”
That gets a smile, however fragile it feels on Tyler’s lips. “Yeah. Like old
times.”
He gathers the robe around his shoulders and shuffles off to bed. He wakes in
the night, to the sound of Ron or David coughing in the dark. He stares at the
ceiling for a long time.
 
===========
 
“So, seriously?” Neal is sitting way too close to Jamie on the dressing room
bench. The six to one loss was painful, humiliating, and Jamie isn’t sure if
his coming out is to blame or they really were that bad. “You suck dick?”
“Get. The fuck. Away from me,” Jamie growls, and Neal gapes at him, too dumb to
recognize the danger he’s in.
Jamie continues to tear at the laces on his skates. He needs to get out of
here, needs to get home, take Marshall out, make another drive around town to
see if Tyler has turned up anywhere.
Modano comes up then, sends Neal away with a tilt of his head. He sits down
beside Jamie, sighs like he can’t figure where to start.
“It’s true?” he asks, and Jamie could try to lie, but he’s always been shit at
it. The truth will come out. He’s not together enough right now to hide it.
“Yeah,” he says, and the team is all focused on him, some watching openly, some
pretending not to. He turns his eyes back to his skates and keeps them there.
Wonders if he should go somewhere else until the other guys have finished
showering and changing.
Modano nods. “Okay. Get cleaned up. I’ll let Marc know.”
By the time Jamie is back in street clothes, Coach Crawford has told Nieuwendyk
and they’re asking for him to “Have a chat” before he heads home.
“I need to call my agent,” he says at the threshold to the office, “My brother
too, probably. My parents don’t…” and Crawford puts a hand on his shoulder.
“You can do that in a minute,” he says, and Jamie nods even though he doesn’t
want to. There’s another guy there, rumpled suit and with a laptop on top of a
briefcase, like he rushed in on his night off.
“Is it true?” Nieuwendyk asks, “That you’re…” he makes a floppy-wristed gesture
and Jamie’s teeth grind together. He feels his uncertainties resolve into rock-
solid stubbornness, and he’s gonna fuck this up, fuck his career before it even
starts.
“Yeah.” He’s getting tired of saying it. “Yes. Sir.” It doesn’t sound any more
polite that way.
“Would you be willing to say you’re not?” the new guy asks, and Jamie blows a
hard breath out of his nose.
“No.” Like when he came out to Jordie, the secret is fucking out there. He can
lie and pretend or whatever—it’s still going to have to come out eventually.
Better to do it all now, he thinks. His stomach twists; it’s gone beyond hungry
and into a dull dizzy ache. He should have run through a drive-through on the
way to the arena, should have just called in sick. This fucking day.
“Can you just not talk about it again? See if this dies down?”
It’s a horrible idea; even Jamie can see that.
“I’m not talking about it tonight,” he says, and that’s as far as he’ll go. “I
need to call my agent and my family before I have anything else to say to
anybody.” He’s not in a position to dictate terms to the fucking General
Manager, but what the hell does the man expect?
The guy with the laptop doesn’t look happy. Jamie doesn’t know if he’s a PR guy
or a lawyer or what.
Nieuwendyk frowns at him, and Coach shakes his head in disappointment. “We’ll
have security get you past the reporters,” he promises. “Come in an hour early
before practice tomorrow; we need to have a talk about the way you played
today.”
And that Jamie can talk about. “Yeah. I know. It won’t…”
“Tomorrow,” Coach cuts him off, and his tone isn’t entirely unkind.
So Jamie goes. There is a pair of security guys outside the office and they
walk him through. Jamie can hear reporters calling his name, and a couple have
figured out how to get to the parking garage gate to scream questions at him.
“Are you gay? Is it true?”
A valet pulls Jamie’s beat-up old truck to the door and Jamie slides behind the
wheel. Breathes freely for the first time tonight.
Just a quick tour around, see if he sees Tyler, he thinks, but his body is on
autopilot, and by the time he pulls up to his parking garage, he can’t bring
himself to go out again. Besides, Marshall is home; Marshall needs him.
It’s well after midnight when he’s got her cage cleaned and the broken glass
swept up, finished off his post-game protein shakes and Gatorade.
“C’mon girl,” he says, turning out the lights. She turns circles in confusion
as he goes to the bedroom, not used to being out of the crate after bedtime. He
picks her up because she’s still too small to jump up to the bed, and tucks her
in under his arm as he lays down. “’S gonna be okay,” he promises, but he
doesn’t believe it at all.
============
Tyler listens to the sounds of Ron and David getting ready for church, the
showers running and the frying pan clanking on the oven burners in the kitchen.
David knocks on the door before they go, and Tyler croaks out a “Yeah?”
“We’ll be back by eleven,” he says, and Tyler knows it’s an invitation to go
with, even if he’ll make them late. Knows it’s an offer for them to stay, but
he needs the half-day to get himself together almost as much as he’s reluctant
to disrupt their schedules any more than he has.
“I’ll see you then.”
The front door opens and closes a little later, and Tyler crawls out of bed. He
needs to get up, needs to move. Ron said they’d go out for lunch, but maybe he
can put together something in the crock pot for dinner. He heads to the
bathroom first though, because he’s got morning business to take care of.
His reflection catches his eye as he’s washing his hands and he stops, stares
at himself. He feels like he should know this boy in the mirror better. The
little scar on his chin and another in his left eyebrow, he knows where those
came from, but it feels like a story he heard from someone else. The sad flop
of hair is pathetic instead of defiant, no longer a flag to wave at the world
saying hate me if you want but you’ll sure as hell notice me.
The boy looks lost, caught between child and adult, colors too bright for the
tired ache in his eyes.
Tyler pulls out the drawer. Ron has bought and kept every useless kitchen
appliance known to man, from a fondue pot to an electric turkey-carving knife.
There has to be something here that’ll do the job Tyler needs. He digs through
the piles of ancient crap under the sink, wonders vaguely who used to use a
curling iron? He finds a pair of scissors, rusty freckles on the blades from
being in the damp for too long, and he leaves them out in case he can’t find
anything better.
He feels guilty sneaking into Ron and David’s bathroom, but he’ll just borrow
what he needs, put it back when he’s done.
He finally finds electric clippers, so old that he’s a little scared to plug
the thing into the wall outlet. It doesn’t zap him though. He takes another
breath and just stands there, feels the weight of it in his hand. The weight of
change. He slides the guard to the next-to-shortest setting and pushes the
switch to ‘on’. It starts to buzz and he hopes it’s working.
The first strand of hair falls like candy-colored dandelion fluff, drifting
down to the tile by his feet. The second is easier to bring himself to do, the
damage already done. The buzz of the clippers turns into a grind as it runs
down the line of Tyler’s hair. The roots have grown in enough since Kendra
colored it that there is just a hint of paler hair left, not enough to even see
what color it was. He uses the mirror, but works mostly by feel, one hand
cupped around the front of the clippers, guiding each pass, the center stripe
widening out to match the rest of his hair to the new length.
Pink and magenta and purple hairs fall over the light blue shoulders of his
pajamas. Settle by his feet.
The boy in the mirror becomes a man, the lines of his face falling into place
without the Mohawk, stark and strong. He’s no less handsome now, but he looks
somehow older.
He’s not Jamie’s Tyler anymore.
============
Jamie wakes up to pounding on his front door and his first thought is “Tyler!”
Marshall panics and scrambles for the edge of the bed and he puts her down
before she can fall off the side, and then he’s rushing for the door.
Jordie lets himself in before Jamie has crossed the living room. He looks like
shit, eyes wide and hair mussed like he rolled out of bed and got in the car.
“Wha?” Jamie doesn’t even know what time it is.
“Mom called me!” Jordie yells at him, rushes in and grabs him, yanks him into a
hug. “You weren’t answering your god damn phone!”
Jamie frowns. “Shit. I thought I could call them in the morning.” He’s not even
sure where his phone is. Maybe still in his truck. The last he can remember
looking at it was there, checking to see if Tyler had called.
“Idiot,” Jordie says, but he looks too relieved to put much heat behind it.
“Some fucking reporter called them. This wasn’t how they were supposed to find
out.”
Jamie sits down heavily on the couch, calls Marshall to him and scritches her
until she calms down. “Shit. What the hell. I’m a rookie on one of the worst
fucking teams in the league. How is my sex life news?”
Jordie sighs, sits down beside him. “You’re the first, Jamie. That’s news.” He
pulls out his phone, calls their parents even though it’s like…Jamie cranes his
neck to see the microwave. Four AM. Fuck.
“Mom. Yeah. I got him. He’s okay.” Jordie’s voice is soft, and Jamie ducks his
head at the thought he had his family that worried. They talk a little more,
Jordie reassuring her and then talking to their dad for a moment. Jamie closes
his eyes and wonders if he’s going to get any sleep at all before he has to be
in for practice. Fuck.
Jordie puts his phone away. “Have you called your agent?”
“Tomorrow,” Jamie promises.
Jordie frowns but doesn’t push it. He pauses though, and looks around.
“Where’s your boy?”
“Gone,” Jamie croaks. Marshall whines like she understands his sorrow.
“What?” Jordie asks, anger in the word. “You come out and he just leaves you?”
Jamie shakes his head. He can’t even really be pissed at Jordie. It wasn’t his
words that drove Tyler away. “No. He left this morning. He. He heard us. Heard
me, what I said.”
“Shit,” Jordie says, sits down beside him.
Jamie takes a shuddering breath.
“Hey. I got skate tomorrow. Early, because I fucked up tonight,” Jamie says.
“Okay,” Jordie says. “You want me to crash here, drive you in in the morning?”
Jamie nods, leans back against the couch. Maybe he’ll just sleep here.
“C’mon,” Jordie says, and scoops Marshall out of his arms. He goes to put her
in her crate but Jamie stops him.
“Nah, I’ll bring her with me.”
“You’re gonna spoil her,” Jordie warns, but Jamie just shrugs. Of all the
problems in his life right now, Marshall getting used to sleeping in the bed is
the least of them.
===========
Tyler weighs the keys in his hands, looks up at Jamie’s building. Behind him,
Ron and David wait in the car. Ten minutes, he told them. He pushes the button
on the clicker, and the gate opens. He feels like a secret agent or something,
with his hair so different, wearing clothes that Ron helped him pick out at
half-price-Wednesday at the Salvation Army-- a long-sleeve Henley under a slim-
cut sports jacket, jeans that fit looser than he’s used to.
He goes up in the elevator and heads to the garage. Jamie is supposed to be in
Anaheim overnight, and Tyler has spent a week remembering things that are in
his bag, things that aren’t easy to replace. A slip of paper with his mom’s new
address on it. Pictures of his sisters. His good boots. Nothing of great value,
but his.
He checks and Jamie’s truck isn’t in the garage. Jordie’s car isn’t either, and
Tyler feels a genuine wash of relief at that.
He goes around to Jamie’s door then, takes a deep breath and knocks hard, three
times. Marshall doesn’t bark. Nobody moves around inside. He puts key to lock
and it turns. Okay. Shit. He can do this. It just hurts, coming back to a place
he had once thought could be home, knowing now that it never was.
Marshall’s cage is empty, but the bowl of water is fresh, clean. Tyler trusts
Jamie enough, despite the way things went down at the end, to think he really
likes her and wouldn’t have gotten rid of her, at least not so fast. Boarding,
probably, Tyler thinks, and it’s easier for him this way, not to have to decide
if he wants to take her with him. Ron and David had said he could bring her,
but he’s not sure how long their offer of a place to crash is open for, how
long it’ll be before he’s scrambling for places to sleep with a half-grown dog
in tow. It was cooler this morning, cool enough to wear a jacket.
He looks around, and his backpack is sitting in the middle of the couch, like
it’s on display. He glances over his shoulder, because everything about this
feels like a trap. There is a sheet of white notebook paper folded and tucked
into the front clasp.
Tyler grabs the paper in one hand, the pack in the other. He thinks about all
that money under the bathroom sink, nearly fifteen hundred dollars. It would
make things so much easier. He could buy a bus ticket south, could rent a hotel
room for a month and a half.
But if he takes that money, that Jamie thought he was buying sex with, that
makes Tyler what Jamie said he was. It’s stubborn, and stupid. It’s just money;
it would spend just fine. But Tyler would know where it came from, and he would
feel dirty. It would be harder, the next time some guy offers him cash for a
blowjob, to say no.
There’s nothing more for him here, so he leaves.
Jamie’s key is heavy in his hand as he locks up behind him, and he doesn’t know
what to do with it so he puts it back in his pocket.
The door to the garage is opening as he passes on his way to the garage. The
neighbor, Mark, skims his eyes over Tyler like he’s never seen him before, like
he sees nothing of interest. Tyler’s jaw tenses, but Mark doesn’t speak,
doesn’t even look him over as he turns on his way to his own apartment, his own
life.
Tyler goes down and slides into the back seat of the car and Ron waits until
his seatbelt is fastened until he pulls away from curb.
“Did you find everything you need?” David asks, and Tyler nods.
“Marshall wasn’t there. He put all my stuff together.” Tyler thought it was a
sitcom thing, the box of personal possessions being returned after a
relationship was over. TV breakups never have a note though, and he pulls it
out of his jacket pocket and unfolds it.
It’s…a mess. There is a center part, that looks like where Jamie started, neat
print in blue pen. But down the side there is more written in black, the
handwriting jittery, like Jamie was tired or drunk when he did it. Little notes
are added to the center, crammed in between the lines, arrows showing where
Tyler should read them.
Tyler, The main part of the note begins, I fucked up. In so many ways. I never
thought you were with me for money. He follows an arrow to a penciled-in (not
counting that first night when I didn’t even know you and you were so fucking
hot and I couldn’t figure out why you would want sex with me if it wasn’t a
money thing).
Tyler blinks and tries to keep reading the original text, like Jamie wrote it
the first time.
I should have kicked Jordie out earlier before it came to that. I should have
told you earlier that I love you. I should have told Jordie that I love you. I
just got so mad that he was calling you that and I lost my temper at him. (I
said stupid things) I am sorry. So fucking sorry.
The pen changes and continues on, I want to beg you to come home. Even if
you’re not coming home to me. I’m so worried right now. You left all your
stuff. I don’t know what to do. (I can’t find you) It hurts to not know if
you’re safe. I want to beg you to come home, but it’s really shitty here right
now. I came out and there are all these reporters and they would be shitty to
you.
He turns the page and reads down the side, Marshall is fine. She misses you but
she’s safe and I’ve got a place to board her when I’m away and a dog walker to
come over when I’m playing in Dallas. If you want her you can have her. I just
want you happy. Just call me or leave a note or ANYTHING and I’ll get her to
you I promise. I won’t steal your dog but I know she makes things hard (I can
keep her until you’re ready, as long as it takes).
And then across the bottom, Fuck, Tyler I fucking love you I’m so sorry I
fucked it all up.
Tyler rereads the note over and over on the way back to the house. Boils it
down to the three important factors:
Marshall is safe, and Jamie will keep her. Tyler thought so, but it’s good to
have it confirmed, good to have Jamie’s promise.
Jamie says he loves him. That. It seems so impossible. He thinks about the
times when they weren’t fucking. Just laying around on the couch, curling up
together in bed. He wants, so badly, to believe Jamie.
Jamie came out. And Tyler loved him, loves him, enough to ache for him, for shy
quiet Jamie shoved into the spotlight like that.
Tyler has a lot to think about. Maybe he fucked up, leaving without talking to
Jamie. Maybe he made mistakes. Before he can think about that though, he needs
to see if Jamie is okay. He can’t call, and he isn’t sure he’s ready to be
there when Jamie gets home, even if reporters ambushing him wasn’t a threat.
“Can we…can we go by the library on the way back?” Tyler asks, “I need to check
the internet for a minute.”
“Of course,” Ron says, “That would be fine. There’s a novel I was wanting to
check out; David and I can look for it while you’re on the computer.”
=============
For the first week, Jamie tries “No comment” and “I’m just here to play
hockey.”
Every time a reporter gets within ten feet of him there’s a microphone out, a
voice calling “Jamie, what’s it like to be a gay hockey player? How are your
teammates taking it? Have you heard the trade rumors?”
“I’m just here to play,” he says for the millionth time, words repeated so many
times that they make no sense anymore, gibberish sounds that just make the
questions louder, ruder.
“You’re going to have to give an interview,” his agent tells him. He doesn’t
have to do anything.
“They’ll keep hounding you until you do,” his sister says when he dares to call
her (after she gives him the worst scolding of his life for not calling their
parents and warning them). “At least this way you can pick who you want to talk
to.”
Jamie tries to choose, but he’s busy as fuck trying to be the best player he
can be. He’s not really scared of a trade. Dallas is scraping the salary floor
and they’re strapped for funds. They won’t trade him for anybody with a higher
salary hit, and there aren’t many up for trade with a lower. He expects some
sort of blowback from his team. There are some cold shoulders, some rearranging
of the locker room seating order when he’s not there. Most of them just kind of
grumble about the media’s focus on not-hockey and go on with it.
He’s leaving morning skate when his phone rings, a number he doesn’t know. He
answers it with his thumb over the end-call button.
“Hello?” Media ambushes have made him wary.
“Is this Jamie Benn?”
“Yeah. Who’s this?” He feels like he should recognize the voice.
“This is Sean. Avery. Robidas gave me your number.”
Jamie shakes his head. Sean Avery.
“What the fuck are you doing, kid? Are you trying to make this as bad as it can
possibly be?”
“What?”
“Look,” Avery tells him. “I’m gonna text you some numbers. You need a PR
person. At least to consult with. You need to take control of this thing, and
I’ve got a reporter from The Advocate that would love to talk to you. He’ll
give you the fairest interview you can hope for.”
Jamie closes his eyes. He had hoped this would all blow over, all go away. Sean
is talking like he’s in for a long ride.
“Benn.” Sean calls his name, not unkindly. “Look. Like it or not, you’re in
this now. You keep on top of it or it’s gonna grind you into the dirt. You call
the numbers I send you. They’re waiting to hear from you.”
He doesn’t like it. He doesn’t have to. He’s gotta do what he can to not let it
fuck up his life.
“I’ll call,” he says. His “Thanks,” is a little late, a little forced, but
he’ll call.
=============
 
Ken is nice, bright and open and cheerful. Jamie tries not to resent the fact
that he’s going to be the one digging into Jamie’s private life, exposing
enough that the rest of the reporters will leave him alone. They’re in one of
the Stars’ private conference rooms at the front offices. Jamie wore a suit,
slicked his hair back to try to get it under control. He keeps flexing his
hands, pulling the skin tight over his knuckles, still bruised from a fight two
days ago.
There’s a camera man, unobtrusive behind his equipment. It feels like Jamie and
Ken are the only ones in the room, the only people in the building.
“Are you ready for us to turn this on?” Ken asks, after they’ve shaken hands
and Jamie drank a cup of water.
“Yeah.” He nods. It isn’t going to get any easier, putting it off for a few
more minutes.
A little red light goes on, and Ken leans back.
“I’m sitting here today with Jamie Benn, the first NHL hockey player to openly
identify himself as gay. So Jamie, how’s this first week been?”
“Yeah, okay,” Jamie says. He can hear himself, just can’t think of anything
better to say.
Ken nods like that wasn’t completely inane. “Can you tell us a little bit about
why you chose to come out?”
“Uh. I didn’t, really,” Jamie starts, and Ken gives him a look that makes it
clear that he needs more than that. “I didn’t choose. It just. Sort of came
out. I’d had a really bad day and there were some words said on the ice, not
thinking that anybody was really gay, but it rubbed me wrong. After I spoke up,
the guy wasn’t having it. Wouldn’t fight me. And then everybody was talking.”
“This was John Scott?” Ken asks, and Jamie nods. He doesn’t want anybody to get
into trouble.
“He said his cousin’s gay. He was just chirping, trying to get a rise.”
“Are you used to that? Hearing language like that? Does it bother you?”
Jamie looks at his hands. Sean had called him again, after he’d set up the
appointments. Talked about what he wanted to do with this ‘opportunity’. Jamie
had said he wanted to help people. It’s an easier goal to focus on than helping
himself.
“Yeah, I hear it. And it is pretty sh—crappy. Not so much for me, because I can
stand up for myself, and my team has my back. But it makes me really mad, for
the kids that aren’t safe. Kids that hear that kind of thing at school or on
the streets. Kids that can’t defend themselves from bullies or their parents or
other people that are in a real position to hurt them.”
Ken leans forward, like he can get his teeth into this. “Do you see a solution?
Could the league do more than it has?”
Jamie shakes his head. “I dunno. That’s not my job. I think change is gonna
start in the room though. Captains and Alternates, coaches. From PeeWee on up.
They’ve gotta watch for it, watch out for their players that might not be able
to talk about themselves like that.”
“How long have you known? About your sexuality?”
Jamie flushes to hear it talked about like that. He shrugs. “I dunno. I mean.
There were girls, but it was always a struggle. Trying to be something I
wasn’t.”
Ken nods, sympathetic. “Have you had a chance, to date men?”
“I…” Jamie thinks of Tyler, those few unguarded moments that were like magic.
“Once. We uh. Broke up recently.”
“So you’re single now?”
Jamie shakes his head. “No. I mean, I am, but I’m not looking to date anybody
else, not anytime soon.”
“If you were,” Ken pushes, “What do you look for in a guy?”
Jamie laughs, rubs a hand over his face. “I dunno. Chemistry.”
“Have you ever found a teammate attractive?”
Jamie cringes. “Ugh. No. That would be really weird.”
“Never?”
“No. Never.”
Jamie shakes his head, lets how gross hockey dudes are show on his face.
Ken grins, tv-handsome and plastic.
“Would you go get a drink with me, after the interview?”
Jamie can’t tell how serious he is, but it doesn’t matter.
“No. Thanks. I need to go home and walk the dog.”
 
================
Tyler takes out the earbuds and puts his head in his hands. Oh, Jamie.
 
==============
Ron and David are being weird, in the days after their orphan’s Thanksgiving,
and Tyler doesn’t know what it means. He’s been trying, to pull his weight
around the house. He’s kept himself busy, with repair jobs that David hasn’t
been able to do, or cleaning things that have gotten away from Ron. He’s tried
to go to bed when they do, or stay out all night instead so nobody has to get
up in the middle of the night to let him in. He helps with the cooking and
raked up, no lie, thirty bags of leaves from the yard. He goes with Ron to the
grocery store and goes with them to doctors appointments and church to help
David get in and out of the car without Ron having to lift so much.
Something has changed though; there have been significant looks between the two
older men, David calling Ron into his office and closing the door, phone calls
that David puts on hold until he can go to a room where Tyler isn’t.
Tyler starts keeping his bag packed, keeps his good boots beside it. He doesn’t
think he’s given them a reason to kick him out, but it doesn’t have to be
personal; there doesn’t have to be a reason. Like maybe it’s just costing too
much to feed him and buy him clothes. Maybe they’re not comfortable with a
long-term guest.
He volunteered for a Habitat for Humanity thing the church is doing, going to
homes of some poor or elderly neighbors and helping them weatherproof the
houses for winter. He’s not sure how he’ll get to it if he’s not living at a
fixed location, how he’ll find a ride when he doesn’t know where he’s sleeping.
He thinks about dropping out, but figures he can wait until the last minute if
it comes to that.
He’s not surprised, when David asks him to have a seat one morning after
breakfast, after the dishes have been cleared away and the table wiped down.
“This isn’t an ultimatum,” David says, his hand resting on a folded piece of
paper. “This is not a list of conditions you have to meet to stay here.”
That…doesn’t help Tyler relax at all, actually.
“Tyler,” Ron says, and Tyler looks at him. “This is a list, of the good things
we think you deserve. That we’d like to try to help you get. We’d like to talk
about it. See what your goals are. If there are things you want that we didn’t
think of. But this…you don’t have to. We can leave this tabled for a week or a
month or indefinitely. You are welcome here. You’re so much help that I don’t
know how we managed before you.”
David looks less sure, and Tyler turns to him, asks without words if this is
true.
David sighs. “We aren’t as young as we used to be. We’d like to help you, to be
ready if something happens to us. We don’t want to push you, but this,” he
turns the paper over in his hands, fidgets with the corner, “These are things
we’d like to do for you, that we’d like to help you get. As much of it as
you’re ready for right now.”
“Can I…can I see what’s on it?” Tyler asks, and David’s stern face softens.
“Of course.”
He unfolds the paper, and passes it to Tyler. There are five items written in
his spidery hand.
The bullet points start fairly insignificant and quickly escalate:
-Bedroom empty and redecorate
-Winter wardrobe
-High School Diploma
-Immigration issues
-Health status/checkup/tests
“This…” Tyler doesn’t know where to start. Yeah, the bedroom he can start
stripping down if they want him to. He’s got as much clothes as he can fit in
his bag, between what he got from Jamie’s place and what they bought him in the
meantime. He’s not even sure why that’s on the list. The next two, he has no
idea where to start on.
And the last item. He knows what they mean by tests. That he’s done dirty
things, that a lot of people have touched him and not all of them were clean.
“I. I don’t know how to…” he wants to throw the list at them, wants to scream
with frustration. He’s fucking this up too and doesn’t know how to…
“Tyler,” Ron’s voice stops his freakout before it can come to a head, before he
can do anything. “We’re here to help you with this. You don’t have to tackle
this on your own. We don’t have a lot of money, but we have time, and the
motivation to help you as much as we can.”
Tyler’s finger lingers on the last item. “There’s a clinic. I see posters in
the bathrooms at the clubs. They do the STI tests for free.”
Ron nods. “That’s a good start. When was the last time you saw a real doctor?”
Tyler folds the corner of the page over, creases it down with his thumbnail.
“Boston. A couple years ago. Before that, it was a physical, for hockey.”
“If you want, it might be easier to start writing down your medical history,”
Ron suggests, and Tyler nods. He doesn’t really want to think about it all, but
he will. He moves up the list to the immigration problem.
“I can’t fix this. I can’t…maybe I could get a good set of fake ID?”
“We had a thought on that,” David says, and Tyler shuts up to let him tell it.
David looks shifty, almost embarrassed. “We know things are rough with your
family. How would you feel about adoption.”
A surprised laugh slips from Tyler’s lips. “What? I turn eighteen in just over
two months.”
David nods like they knew that, and Tyler realizes he’s told them already.
“We’d have to wait until then, so the application isn’t caught in the system
when you become legally adult,” David explains, “But we’d like to do it as an
adult adoption. Ron doesn’t have any children, so it’s an option for
inheritance purposes, and would give you a path to citizenship.”
“Shit,” Tyler breathes, overwhelmed by the idea of it. He catches himself too
late, winces “Sorry.”
“It’s kind of a big deal,” Ron says, ignoring the profanity.
“Think about it,” David counsels. “Don’t decide anything today.”
Tyler nods, feeling a little dizzy with the thought of it. That they want him.
Want to keep him. Like family. Like forever.
“I’m not going back to high school,” he says. Pushing the limits because he
can’t fucking stop himself, but also because he can’t even imagine it, being
around kids like that, who have never seen the things he has, so clean and dumb
and innocent.
“There’s an online program,” Ron says. “If you want. We could get a computer
here, and the internet. You could go at your own pace.”
Tyler shrugs. Fuck it. If that’s the thing they’re wanting, with all that
they’re offering, he would have to be an asshole to say no. “I’m not like book-
smart,” he cautions, “But I’ll try.”
“That’s all we could ever ask for,” Ron says.
Later, as Tyler is packing up the floral bedspread for charity, he thinks about
Jamie, and the note he left. Love the word had read, the shaky ones like Jamie
couldn’t help but put them down. I fucking love you and Tyler can’t go back
yet. He’s not a hooker, and he doesn’t need Jamie or his money. He’s made it
through on his own for long enough to know that. Jamie makes it too easy
though, with his generous heart. If Tyler looks like he needs something or even
just wants it, then Jamie will give, and it’ll get all tangled up again.
He thinks about David’s list, and the person he’ll be, working on getting it
done. Maybe the kind of guy that can be an outed hockey player’s boyfriend. The
kind Jordie won’t hate just because of what he is. He tries to picture it, and
he thinks he’d like to be that guy, with or without Jamie in his life.
====================
Jamie pulls into the parking garage and walks past Jordie’s car on the way
through. He knows it’s been hard on his brother, spending as much time in
Dallas as he can, making the hour drive up to Allen three or four times a week,
going on road trips with his own team and then driving back down. He’s not sure
how to tell Jordie to stop though, not when the apartment is so cold and empty
to come back to when he’s gone, not like a home at all without Tyler there.
So he’s expecting Jordie to be hanging out, sitting on his couch. What comes as
a surprise is the pile of loose cash in front of him, curling bills refusing to
stack nicely, and…rolls of toilet paper?
“Jordie?” Jamie asks, trying to make sense of it. “Uh, whatcha got there?”
“This isn’t yours?” Jordie asks, but like he knows the answer.
“No…”
Jordie frowns. “Your boy. He came and got his stuff, you said.”
“Tyler,” Jamie corrects. He might not be Jamie’s anymore, but he has a fucking
name.
“Tyler,” Jordie agrees. He gestures at all the money. “I was changing the roll,
and twenties fell out of the new one, so I went digging through to the back of
the cabinet. This. There’s like fifteen hundred dollars here.”
Jamie winces. He’s not sure exactly how much money he left out for Tyler. A
hundred or so every time he went away, twenties dropped almost daily in the
bowl. Subtract out the money that Jamie knows Tyler spent, the shopping trip to
Target, the food that appeared that Jamie didn’t have on the grocery-delivery.
Takeout that Tyler didn’t ask Jamie to open his wallet for, and this…this has
to be close to what’s left. Tyler spent nearly nothing.
“Put it back,” Jamie says, and Jordie looks up at him. “I’m fucking serious.
It’s his. It was a gift. A bunch of little gifts. If he needs it enough to come
back for it, I want that money just where he left it.” The weather has turned
cold during the first week of December. Nothing compared to some of the cities
Jamie’s traveling to, but it’s dipping below freezing at night. Jamie is sick
at the idea of Tyler sleeping outdoors in it, Tyler doing things he doesn’t
want to just to avoid that.
“Why would he have left it?” Jordie asks, and Jamie doesn’t want to have this
conversation, doesn’t want to fight with his brother.
“Because he’s not a fucking hooker, dumbass. He heard us and he. God, I can’t
even…”
“I thought…” Jordie hesitates. “Jamie, you have to know what it looked like…”
“But it wasn’t,” Jamie insists and Jordie hangs his head.
“You’re right. I didn’t…I just saw some guy that I thought was taking advantage
of my baby brother, who is sometimes too nice for his own good, and I jumped to
conclusions.”
“Damn right you did,” Jamie snaps, and Jordie nods.
“I fucked up.”
“Yeah.”
Jordie’s confession takes some of the bite out of Jamie’s anger.
“So what’re you going to do?”
“About what” Jamie asks through clenched teeth. “He’s gone and probably not
coming back. He isn’t answering the phone or the texts I’ve sent him.”
Jamie sits down in one of the chairs, pinches between his eyes. He wants Tyler
back, but he’d take knowing where he is, that he’s somewhere safe.
“Have you looked for him?”
Jamie rolls his eyes. God, Jordie is trying to be helpful.
“I’ve looked everywhere,” Jamie complains. “Every place we ever went to eat,
everywhere we played pool, the grocery store, all the bars and clubs he can get
into, Deep Ellum and Oak Lawn both. I found some friends of his. I’m not sure
if they hadn’t seen him or just wouldn’t tell me if they had.”
He’d given Dion and Eduardo all the cash he’d had on him anyway. He’s not sure
if they thought he was trying to bribe them, but they’d taken it.
”If you see him, let him know he can call me. I don’t. I know he doesn’t owe me
anything. I just worry.” Dion had nodded, stoic, and Eduardo had frowned at
Jamie like he’d heard the whole story of what an asshole he’d been.
“Have you thought? About calling in a professional?”
“Huh?”
“At finding people.”
“No.” Jamie is firm on that. “No. I am not sending a freakin’ PI bounty hunter
whatever after him. No. Sans.”
Jordie looks at him like he’s being intentionally difficult.
“No,” Jamie repeats. He means it.
====================
“I’m. I’m not good with needles.”
The rubber strap around Tyler’s upper arm pinches. The guy with the needle is
huge, tall as Jamie and built like a fifty-gallon drum. His teeth are crooked
but his smile is kind.
“Take your time. Deep breaths. I haven’t had someone pass out on me in three
months. Don’t break my streak, okay?”
Tyler does as he’s told, almost wishing he hadn’t asked Ron sit out in the
waiting room until it was over.
It’s not getting any easier, so he nods. “Do it.”
The needle finds a vein, a prick and then the little vial starts to fill with
the dark red of Tyler’s blood. He swallows hard and has to look away. It feels
weird is all, the needle hanging out inside his skin, and it’s almost like he
can feel his blood going into it. The pressure is weird, sickening.
The clinic guy reaches up and unties the rubber strap and the blood goes out
faster and Tyler looks up at the flickering fluorescent light in the corner.
He doesn’t faint.
===================
Jamie’s determination not to have Tyler professionally stalked lasts until the
middle of December, when a cold snap drops the temperature into the teens and
Dallas freaks the fuck out, schools closing, bridges shut down, roads frozen
and the best the city has to deal with it is gravel trucks to grit the
intersections.
If Tyler is out in this, he’s fucked, and the shelters aren’t much better. He
imagines Tyler with his pink hair and sharp smile, a bright spark in a room
full of dirty tired men.
The police find a teenage prostitute dead in an abandoned car, and Jamie
catches half the report on the news in the DFW airport, can’t quiet the
pounding in his chest until he can find it on his phone and read the rest.
Hispanic. Female. Not Tyler, not Tyler, not Tyler. Jesus.
He spends a day off calling half a dozen private investigators. Four of them
turn him down. “Not my thing, missing persons,” is the usual reason. “Hard to
get results and nobody wants to pay to hear there’s no progress.”
The fifth one sits and listens and shakes his head. “Keep your money. Kids like
that, they don’t want to be found.”
The sixth one is a tall blond woman named Gwen, and Jamie starts off the
meeting saying he knows it’s a long shot, knows he doesn’t have much for her to
go on.
“I’m willing to pay for you to do your best,” he says when she tears the sheet
of notes out of her book, folds it and slides it across the table to him. She’s
not taking the job and he just. He doesn’t know what to do. “I know guys like
Tyler are slippery. I know it’s going to be a hard job. Please. Please.”
She narrows her eyes like she’s got x-ray vision and can see through his brain.
“Here’s the deal,” she says, hands flat on the table. She’s as tall as Jamie
and he probably only outweighs her by twenty pounds. The way she moves, he
would put money on her in just about any kind of fight that wasn’t on ice. “I’m
not in the business of finding people that don’t want to be found. In my
experience, boyfriends leave for a reason. If he’s hiding from you, it’s
probably a good reason.”
“He’s not. I mean, I don’t think he is. I don’t think he’s scared, and if he
is, you can handle it however you feel is best for him, okay? I just need to
know if he’s dead or alive. If he’s in trouble. If he needs help and he’s just
being too damn stubborn for his own good.”
Gwen stares him down, but Jamie won’t look away.
“Ten grand buys you a month of work,” she says. “If I find him sooner, and he’s
happy to hear from you, I’ll get you a check for the balance. If I find out
he’s actively hiding from you, I’m giving him whatever’s left over and helping
him go so deep you’ll be the only one who ever heard of him.”
“Fine,” Jamie agrees, easily, eagerly. “Please. Whatever he needs, okay? He
doesn’t have to call me. You don’t have to tell me where he is, where he’s
staying. Just that he’s okay or not.”
She takes his check and promises to let him know in a week.
 
=================
“I’m not looking to date anybody else, not anytime soon.”
Jamie on the screen looks tired, trapped. Not happy even though he’s trying to
keep himself neutral, professional.
Tyler grounds himself with a deep breath, feels his roots settle, knows he’s
safe and sheltered and wanted here. He clicks on ‘play again’ and rewatches the
whole interview. Jamie talking about the bad day that started it all, the day
Tyler left. Talking about kids like Tyler, dealing with assholes that have the
ability to back their hateful words up with real harm.
He watches Jamie’s eyes, as he talks about someone special, that he’s not in a
relationship with anymore, and it’s possible, but Tyler doesn’t think it’s
likely that Jamie fell in and out of love in the few weeks it’s been since
Tyler left.
Ron settles into the kitchen chair beside him. Tyler resists the urge to click
away or close the laptop. Ron watches the end of the interview with him, Jamie
talking about hockey and the language he hears on the ice. They cut it with
clips of Jamie’s fights, three of them so far this season. In another interview
Jamie had done they asked him about it, if he thinks he’s fighting more because
he’s gay.
“If you’d told me when I was your age, that a boy that plays hockey would tell
the world he’s queer, I never would have believed it,” Ron says. Tyler glances
at him. He wants to say, that this is the Jamie he used to know, the Jamie he
loved. Loves. It sounds crazy though, that a NHL player could ever have been
with a boy like Tyler.
“He seems like a brave young man,” Ron muses, and Tyler presses his lips
together.
“He just messed up. Said something he shouldn’t have and then had to deal with
it.”
“Not that,” Ron says. “Although it takes courage to handle that part of it.”
Tyler cocks his head, turns his attention from the screen.
“The way he talks about his lover. To even mention matters of the heart to the
media. The way he talks about the most vulnerable members of the community. A
man like that, with all the advantages he has, it would be easy to only see how
this will change his life. I’m impressed, that he can speak so eloquently on
the suffering of others.”
Tyler starts the video over.
“His lover must have been an impressive person,” Ron muses, and then gets up.
He pats Tyler’s shoulder, once, and then goes back out to whatever he’d been
doing before.
Tyler watches the video twice more. Looks for any lie in Jamie’s words. He
doesn’t say a lot about his ex, but there is no shame in his face or his voice.
Regret maybe. Like he cared. Like he cared about Tyler.
 
================
“I know you’re Canadian, Jamie, and this is less of an issue for you, but how
do you feel about queer America’s fight for gay marriage?”
Jamie snorts. “I couldn’t give two shits. Seriously.”
The ‘interviewer’ looks to Jamie’s image consultant, who calls a time-out.
“Okay, seriously, please never say that at an actual interview.”
Jamie frowns. Mock interviews are like his least favorite thing this week.
Joanne presents them like a preemptive strike, that if they uncover all his
danger zones before some reporter asks, then they won’t have to do days or
weeks of damage control. Sean said this part was imperative, to keep him from
putting his foot in it. Still, sometimes he’d just like to use his own damn
words.
“I just don’t care,” Jamie says again, and they can’t make him care, and he
won’t lie that it’s a priority.
Joanne sips at her water like she wishes it was vodka. “Explain it to me. We
need to have an alternate dialog if that’s how you feel.”
Jamie nods, jaw working as he looks for the words. “I just think there are more
important things for ‘queer America’ to worry about y’know? There are thousands
of homeless kids out there, queer kids from fucked-up families or no families
or families that make home a shittier option than whoever picks them up off the
street. Fuck marriage. Seriously. These kids are dying.”
Joanne sits back, considers. “Okay. Leave off the ‘fuck marriage’ bit. And the
not giving two shits. Start at the ‘more important things’ part.” She nods to
the assistant who is reading the questions.
“Okay, again.”
“I know you’re Canadian, Jamie, and this is less of an issue for you, but how
do you feel about queer America’s fight for gay marriage…”
===========
“Happy birthday,” Eduardo says, pulling the door of Tyler’s room closed behind
them - Tyler’s room all in blue and sandy beige, with his laptop on the dresser
and his clothes in the drawers. Outside, they can hear the sounds of the
‘little get-together’ still going on, people Tyler knows from church mostly,
some folk he met doing the Habitat weekend.
Dion digs in the pocket of his jacket and comes out with a small bottle of rum,
barely enough to get one of them drunk. Tyler splits it between their three red
Solo cups, adding it to the pink punch with raspberry sherbet floating in it
that Ron made for the occasion.
The first sip is horrible, like a too-sweet Sunrise and Tyler isn’t the only
one making a face. They laugh though, and get it down. Dion sits down on
Tyler’s bed, his back up against the headboard. Eduardo joins him there, head
on Tyler’s pillow, and makes grabby hands in Tyler’s direction.
Tyler rolls his eyes, because these guys are ridiculous, but he goes, climbing
over Dion and fitting himself in the narrow slot they left for him. Dion
strokes his short-buzzed hair smooth and flat, and Eduardo spoons up behind
him.
“You been okay?” Eduardo whispers in his ear, “These old queens treating you
good?”
Tyler hums in agreement, relaxes into the warmth of his friends. “Yeah. So good
it doesn’t make sense most of the time, but yeah.”
“Better than that rich young guy?”
Tyler doesn’t answer that, lets Dion pet him and tries to feel a buzz from the
small portion of alcohol.
Someone laughs out in the living room. The toilet in the guest bathroom
flushes.
“What the fuck did he do to you?” Dion asks, low and dangerous.
Tyler groans. “Nothing. Not really.”
“But enough that you’d leave a sweet deal like that?”
Tyler winces, wishes there’d been some way to keep his dignity and the trickle
of cash to his friends at the same time.
“Who says he didn’t get bored of me and kick me out?” Tyler asks, and Eduardo
scoffs.
“Didn’t seem crazy to me.”
Dion rubs at the back of Tyler’s neck, soothing the tense muscles. If they did
that sort of thing, fucking other people for recreation, he’d offer a blowjob.
He thinks it would be good, comfort and pleasure without too many expectations.
He sighs and relaxes again instead, drapes an arm over Dion’s waist and closes
his eyes.
“I don’t even know anymore. I thought he was just fucking around. Like he
thought it was friends with some awesome benefits. And I knew I was getting
dumb over him. But I didn’t want to quit. Then he was fighting with his
brother, and I overheard, and he made it sound like he thought he was paying
for it this whole time. So I just. I freaked out. Came here. But then I sneaked
back to get my shit, and there was this fucking note. Like a serious note. I
believe it, but.”
“But it hurt like hell and you’re scared of getting fucked like that again,”
Eduardo finishes when Tyler can’t find the words.
“Yeah.” That’s it exactly.
“If it ain’t scary, it ain’t real,” Dion says. “Just make sure you ain’t the
only one shakin’.”
Jamie being scared has never been the problem. Tyler just assumed it was always
because of the sex thing or the way his dick looks. He has to wonder now, if it
was a Tyler thing that had him nervous.
A tap-tap comes from Tyler’s door. “Tyler?” David calls, and Tyler sits up,
instinctively afraid of being caught by a parental figure in a bed with boys
before he realizes how little that matters now, here.
“Yeah, David?” he goes and opens the door, shows all clothes are still on, that
the room isn’t full of pot smoke or something.
David smiles. Holds out a plate of Ron’s leftover mini-sandwiches. “Just
letting you know all the other guests have left.” Tyler remembers enough of
normal to know he’s shown really bad manners, hiding away for the last half of
a party thrown for him. David doesn’t reprimand him for it. “Your friends are
welcome to stay the night if they’d like to.”
He looks over his shoulder and Eduardo shrugs and nods.
“Yeah, if it’s okay.”
David nods. “Of course it’s okay. Anybody need anything? Pajamas? There are
extra towels in the hall closet.”
Tyler steps in and wraps him in a hug, startling David into nearly dropping the
plate. Maybe there was more rum than he thought.
“You’re welcome,” David says, like it’s all over the top and nearly annoying,
but a smile is playing at his lips and he pats Tyler on the back. “No
shenanigans now,” he warns.
Dion and Eduardo stare at Tyler like they’ve never seen anything like it, and
color rises on Tyler’s cheeks. He flips them the bird with his back turned to
David, mouths “fuck off” silently at them. Assholes. They crack up and David
pats Tyler’s shoulder once more before he turns away and shuts the door.
Tyler brings the snacks back to bed and lets Dion and Eduardo divvy them up
between them. They watch a show on Tyler’s tiny laptop screen, and fall asleep
in a tangle on top of the blankets. For a night, the dangers of the world seem
far removed from all of them. The last sleepover like this that Tyler got to
host was back before his parents started fighting. He falls asleep between
them, crowded but happy, ignoring the ache that he knows will come in the
morning.
Dion levering himself out from under Tyler’s head wakes him up in the morning
and he groans in disappointment. “Already? Maybe…I could ask…”
Eduardo kisses his temple. “This don’t look like it could take two more hungry
mouths,” he murmurs, and Tyler knows it couldn’t. He can’t, won’t, ask Ron and
David for things that would be hard to say no to, things they can’t really
afford.
He gets up with his friends, in the thin light. There’s frost on the windows.
The floors are cold. “Here,” he says, and passes Eduardo the sweater that Jamie
gave him. He wishes he had something for Dion, but he’s smiling like it counts
as a gift for him too, for Eduardo to be the one wearing it. He slips Dion the
twenty that Mrs. Mueller next door gave him for sweeping the leaves off of her
roof.
“You got my number?” he asks at the door. Eduardo nods, hikes his backpack up
on his shoulder a little higher.
“Yeah. We. We’re good, Tyler. Just do us a favor and don’t fuck this up, okay?”
Tyler smirks. “I’m tryin’.” His grin softens. “If you get in a bind, call me.
I’ll see what I can do.”
They nod and go. Tyler shivers in his bathrobe and shuffles back inside. The
smell of coffee hits him, and he feels guilty, pouring himself a cup to sip at
while he cleans up the party debris while Ron watches.
“Tyler, I wish…” Ron says, but Tyler shakes his head.
“Don’t. I know. I know you would if you could.”
===================
She’s tall, the woman waiting for Tyler after church. The January wind cuts
cold and fierce, and the Dallas-native parishioners hurry to their cars,
cutting a little bubble of space around her, striding upstream through the flow
of people towards him.
He knows, he knows she’s there for him. Can see it in the way her eyes find him
and stick with him. Fuck fuck fuck, he doesn’t know who she is or why she’s
searching. He slows a step, lets Ron and David come up beside him, and in
another step, he’ll let them pass so he can turn and bolt without running into
them, without endangering them.
David’s hand catches his arm above the elbow, surprisingly strong.
“Together,” David says. “Whatever this is, we’ll meet it together.”
They stop walking, stand with him as the woman approaches, holds out a business
card.
David reaches out and takes it, reads it and flicks it into the pocket of his
coat.
“What is this about?” he snaps, all business.
“I’m Gwen Christie,” she says, direct to Tyler. “I’m a private investigator; I
specialize in missing persons.”
Tyler stares wide-eyed. “Did my parents send you?” It seems so improbable, but
he has missed two check-in texts since he smashed his phone. Maybe they did.
Maybe they would.
“No.” She shakes her head, like she understands the flicker of hope he feels
die in his chest. “I’m working for Jamie Benn.”
The name hits him like a glass of ice-water to the face, sharp and surprising.
He’s been without Jamie for longer than they were together, but he still wants.
To see Jamie’s smile again, not the fragile fake thing he wears in interviews.
He wants nights snuggling in front of the TV, and to see how large Marshall has
grown.
“What…why would Jamie hire a PI?” he asks, but he already knows.
“I was hoping you could tell me,” she says. “He says he is worried about you.
That he wants to know if you’re alive, healthy and happy, and if not if there’s
anything he can do. I’ve heard that from clients before though, and I’m not
telling him anything you don’t want me to.”
“Maybe we could continue this conversation indoors?” Ron offers, and Gwen nods.
Tyler is glad for the time it takes to walk back inside, to a side-chapel more
suited to silent reflection than a discussion about Tyler’s ex.
They sit, Ron and David on either side of him. Gwen talks straight to him
though, like they aren’t there.
“I’m not in the business of finding people who don’t deserve to be found,” she
says. “Deadbeat dads, dishonest business partners, cheating spouses, sure.
Sometimes I get a call like Mr Benn’s, where the person being looked for
doesn’t seem to have a reason to stay missing.”
Tyler picks at the corner of his thumbnail, frowns down at the carpet.
“I’m not…he was dumb. A thing he said. I’m not hiding from him. Not like I’m
scared. I just.” He tries to reconcile what he heard that morning with the
Jamie of the interviews, talking about someone who really mattered, someone who
could only be Tyler.
“What does he want?” Tyler asks, because he needs to know what’s expected of
him.
“He says he wants to help you if you need it. He wants me to find out if you’re
in a good place or not. If you’re alive or dead.”
Tyler wrinkles his nose. That’s not any more useful than the last time she said
it.
“You can tell him I’m doing good,” he says, a little insulted that Jamie would
have so little faith in his survival skills. “The best I’ve been in a long
time. I’m just working through some stuff right now. But. When I get a little
more settled, I’ll call him. If you can give me his number, because I lost my
phone.”
Gwen’s lips twitch at the corner. “I can’t give out client information without
his permission. Would you like me to call and ask?”
Tyler reaches for Ron’s hand. Being a phone call away from Jamie is
distressing, disorienting. He doesn’t even know why. He’s wants to go back,
aches to go back— so much he’s scared of losing himself again, giving Jamie
back the power to break him. But he’s scared of being rejected too, of being
wrong. Scared that Jamie doesn’t actually care, that he just wanted to clean up
the last of his responsibility for Tyler.
“Yeah,” Tyler says, more breath than voice. “Yeah, if it’s not a problem.”
Gwen stands up and suddenly there’s so much Tyler wants to say.
“Wait. Tell him thanks for keeping Marshall. And tell him I’m proud. Of the
things he says in the interviews.”
Her smile is soft and indulgent, like she can see what Jamie sees in him, the
good parts that make him worth finding.
“I’ll tell him.”
She walks out of earshot and takes out her phone.
“Are you okay?” David asks, bony hand on Tyler’s knee. “You don’t have to see
this boy. You don’t ever have to call him.”
“I know.” Tyler nods, chews on his lower lip.
“Tyler,” Ron says, more firmly, “You are not his reward for the things he says
to those reporters. You’re not his compensation for enduring the fights and the
slurs.”
Tyler blinks because it never occurred to him that he was. Not in those words
at least. “No, I know that.”
“If you want this, we’ll support you,” David says. “If you don’t, or you’re not
ready, we’ll support you in that too.”
“I’m not,” Tyler says, “Ready. But I will be, and I think…I’d like the chance
to know him again. I can’t. Can’t let myself get all wrapped up again. Not like
that where I didn’t have barely anything to hold onto when I was hurt. But
maybe…”
The investigator comes over again, pulling paper and pen out of her back
pocket. “He said to give you his number, and to tell you he doesn’t think he’s
owed a call, but he’d love one if you want to make it. However long it takes.”
Tyler takes the page she hands him and passes it over to David so he doesn’t
lose it.
“My number is there as well. If you want to contact Mr Benn indirectly, feel
free to call me and I can pass on a message for you.”
Tyler nods, thinking how if this was actually a bad situation, how lucky he
would be to have her playing the protective middle.
“Thanks. Tell him. Tell him I said thanks. Okay?” She nods and steps back.
“It was a pleasure doing business with you,” she says, and seems genuinely
pleased.
She goes then, and Tyler is left to figure out what to do now.
David levers himself up from the bench, and Tyler instinctively stands to help
him up.
Halfway to the door, a thought occurs to him.
“You knew,” he says to Ron. “You knew Jamie Benn was my Jamie.”
Ron shrugs. “It’s not that common a name, Tyler,” he says, and when that
doesn’t seem to be enough, “You should have seen your face, watching him on the
screen.”
Tyler ducks, embarrassed to have been so open, so naked, even if there’s no
cost to pay because of it.
===============
“Mr Benn, is this a good time?”
It’s been twenty-eight days; Gwen is probably calling to see if Jamie wants to
pay for another month of searching. He’s been debating with himself, trying to
guess if this is helping Tyler or hurting. If he’s heard that there are people
looking for him so he’s going to more extreme circumstances to hide, maybe even
leaving the city where he seemed to have friends. Or if he’s really in trouble,
if there’s a reason he won’t answer Jamie’s texts. If he needs to be found.
He stands up from the table where he’s having a late breakfast with Jordie and
some guys from his team, waving off Jordie’s concerned frown.
“Yeah, this is fine, just give me a sec.”
He heads back to the restrooms, to a corner that is sheltered from the dining
room noise and the restaurant’s sound system.
“Okay, go ahead.”
He still hasn’t decided if he’s paying for another month, or if he’s giving up
on this last hope, on Tyler.
“I found him,” Gwen says, three words and Jamie’s knees wobble. He leans his
shoulder against the wall, curls in to hear her better.
“He’s…Is he okay?”
“Appears to be,” she tells him. “He’s staying with an elderly couple, looks to
be in good health and good spirits.”
“Oh.”
Tyler is…Tyler is safe, alive.
Tyler is safe, alive, and hasn’t contacted him.
“He said to tell you he’s good, the best he’s been in a while. And that he’s
proud of you, and thanks you for looking after…Marshall. He said he’s working
on some things, but asked if he can call you when he’s ready. He’s asking for
your number.”
Jamie frowns. “He already has it. Are you sure this is the right Tyler?” But he
knows about Marshall, and Jamie hasn’t mentioned her in any of the interviews;
it has to be the right Tyler.
“Positive. He’s changed his appearance, but the way he reacted when I
approached, I have no doubts. He said he didn’t have that phone anymore.”
And if Tyler didn’t have his phone, he had no way to get Jamie’s number. Maybe
he hasn’t even heard all of Jamie’s begging and apologizing and late-night
drunk-dials. That may actually work in Jamie’s favor.
“Oh. Sure. Of course you can give it to him.”
“Okay. I’ll do that. I wouldn’t expect a call right away though.”
Jamie sighs. He’d love to talk to Tyler now, to hear for himself that he’s
alright. He doesn’t want to push though.
“Is he pissed? That I had you look for him?”
There’s a slight pause, as if she’s considering the situation. “I’m no social
worker, but I’d say he’s relieved to be found. A little disappointed that it
wasn’t his parents that hired me, but he didn’t flinch that it was you.”
“Tell him he doesn’t have to call. But I would be really glad if he did. When
he’s ready.”
“Anything else?”
Jamie thinks but nothing comes to mind. He’s said everything he can say. I miss
you comes to mind, and Please please come home. Neither are fair.
“Just. If he needs something, and he doesn’t want to call me, can he call you?
I’ll pay for your time. Whatever it takes. Whatever he needs.”
“Got it,” she says.
He wants to keep her on the line. Wants to ask what Tyler changed, where he is,
what he’s wearing.
“Thank you. Keep me informed.”
He hangs up when she assures him she will, and goes back to the table, feeling
like someone just hit him in the head with an ax handle.
“Everything okay?” Jordie asks, and Jamie lets out a deep breath. Doesn’t want
to get into his big gay drama in front of Jordie’s teammates.
“Yeah. It’s. Good.”
They go back to eating and Jamie shovels the food into his mouth and down his
throat without tasting anything. His phone chirps a little while later, a short
text from Gwen.
Tyler says thanks
Thanks, Jamie thinks, wondering what the hell he’s done that deserves
gratitude.
=============
“I’m not good with needles,” Tyler says, one hand tight on the chair’s arm, the
other resting on the padded work surface.
Ian laughs, pauses with the needle inches above Tyler’s bicep. “You know this
is nothing but needles, for the next couple hours, right?”
Ashleigh snickers and he flips her off. Just because she’s paying for this
doesn’t mean she can laugh at him.
He knows tattoo means needles, and he’s seriously not looking forward to the
process. Some guys are into that kind of thing, but pain has never done it for
him.
But he wants the ink, wants the sketch on his arm to rest under his skin, the
tree’s branches reaching up and the roots sinking down, his heart bound secure
to the trunk. He wants to mark the occasion, a birth date passed that feels
like an event for the first time since he left home. A test that somehow,
miraculously, came back clean. He wants to celebrate paperwork filed and a name
that’s soon to change.
He thinks of Jamie’s number, programmed into Tyler’s new phone. He has checked
the Stars schedule, and tomorrow looks good for a call. He’s ready, and he
wants to do it. He doesn’t need Jamie in his life, but he’d like to have him
there. He’s not sure what they’ll be to each other now, if they can be whatever
they were before, or just friends, or what even Jamie is hoping for. They’ll
have to figure that out together.
He wants his roots to show, the things that anchor him. He wants his branches
to taste sunlight, to remind him that there is a future, with or without Jamie,
and it can be good.
“C’mon, Tyler,” Ashleigh says, “I wanna see if I like his work before I get
mine.”
Once Ian starts, there’s no going back. Tyler won’t leave it half-done. “Fuck,
okay, go.”
The needle burns, more than jabs, a buzzing scrape that goes on and on. It’s
easier than getting blood drawn though, doesn’t ache in the same hollow way. He
drifts, not quite dozing off, just loses himself in the sensation of it all.
Accepts it like the winter cold or deep hollowing hunger, something that he
can’t fight against, only take it and wait it out. It's more than that; it's
hurt that means somethingfor the first time, pain he's choosing to endure to
get something he really wants.
He looks at the work, before Ian wraps it up, raw and flecked with blood and
ink. He thinks that it was worth every minute of the pain.
=====================
The text comes on the fifth of March, late in the morning, while Jamie’s on the
treadmill at the apartment’s gym.
This is Tyler, it reads, Is this a good time for me to call?
Yes Jamie says, nearly falling off of the belt in his hurry to get the word
out.
At the gum. Give me five.
Gym. Heading up. Don’t wat to lose you in the elevator.
Want.
Sorry.
Jamie tries to console himself with the fact that Tyler already knows that the
stupid little buttons were never designed for thumbs as big as Jamie’s.
He practically runs for home, remembers his towel hanging on the bar of the
bench press when he’s already halfway up and writes it off as an acceptable
loss.
He’s just wrangling Marshall to keep her inside while he gets himself through
the door when the phone rings, the same number the text just came from, and
Jamie is out of breath when he answers.
“H’lo?”
And then Tyler’s voice is there, “Hi. It’s Tyler.”
“Hi,” Jamie says back, sliding down to sit on the floor. Marshall pokes her
nose in, ears pricked, trying to find where he’s hiding Tyler.
“Hey,” Tyler says and Jamie says it back. There should be more, important
words, but he just can’t get over it, that Tyler actually called, that he’s
listening to Tyler’s voice.
Tyler laughs then, soft. “Shit. I knew I should have written down what I wanted
to say.”
“Hey,” Jamie says again, low and gentle. He doesn’t want Tyler to be stressed
out calling him. Doesn’t want Tyler to get frustrated and hang up. “Tell me how
you’ve been.”
Tyler’s voice softens then, “I’ve been good, Jamie. Real good. Better than…a
long time. I’m staying with these guys, and they’re helping me out. I’ve got a
lot of stuff to straighten out. I’m getting my immigration shit taken care of.
Working on a GED. Jesus, I’m not that kind of smart. Was it hard for you?
School and hockey at the same time?”
“Kind of?” Jamie says. “There were a lot of late nights, studying on a bus,
that kind of thing. But hey. Give yourself some slack too, okay? You took a
couple years off, and you’ve got years to make up. That doesn’t happen
overnight.”
Tyler snorts. “You sound like David.”
It takes Jamie’s breath, to hear another man’s name on Tyler’s lips. He powers
through it though, “That David sounds like a smart guy.”
“I found another dog,” Tyler says without segue, “Or he found me. Something was
tipping over the trash cans so I had to wait until just before the truck came
to take the bags down, and here I was at six AM, in the dark, freezing my nuts
off, and this shadow so big I thought it was a cow is suddenly just there.
Scared the shit out of me. I thought he was gonna eat me, but he was more
scared than I was. Backed himself into a corner and just stood there shaking
and growling. I came back the next morning with a pack of bologna and teased
him in. Took me a week to get him in the house.”
Jamie scratches behind Marshall’s ears, wonders if this is his cue to be
offended on her behalf. Wonders what Tyler wants from him at all.
“I named him Cash,” Tyler says, winding down. “After Jonny Cash. David is
really into that kind of thing. But he’s more Ron’s dog now. Ron can’t get up
from his chair without that dog under his feet. Well. Beside his hip. He’s
huge.”
Gwen had said, that Tyler was staying with some older men. Jamie knows it’s
none of his business, nothing he can control. Tyler seems content though, not
like he’s whoring himself out for a roof over his head. Jamie wants to ask, to
make damn fucking sure, but he bites his lip on the question.
“Hey, so,” Tyler says to fill the quiet that goes on too long. “Out of the
closet in the NHL. Holy shit Jamie, what were you thinking?”
Jamie huffs a laugh, shakes his head even though Tyler isn’t there to see it.
Marshall curls up in his lap, ears pricked at the phone, still listening to her
daddy’s voice.
“Little bit of a miscalculation,” Jamie says, and Tyler laughs with him for a
bit.
“But things are getting better?” Tyler asks, and Jamie imagines he hears
genuine worry in his voice.
“Yeah,” Jamie says, because they are.
“It’s been over eight games since you had a fight, I saw. That’s a record for
you this season, yeah?”
Jamie chuckles. “Yeah.”
“So how’d that happen. The officials finally doing their jobs?”
Jamie feels a little swell of pride.
“I uh. So I was on the ice, and this guy on the other team was all ‘Hey faggot.
Hey cock-sucker. Hey queer,’ trying to get me worked up enough to drop the
gloves. And I just. It was ridiculous. I just looked at him like ‘So?’ and he
got more graphic, and I was like ‘Yeah? So?’ and somewhere along the line he
realized how dumb it was to call me things that I admit I am.”
“That’s…shit.”
Jamie shrugs. “It’s just words. They’ve mostly stopped.”
“I saw your interview,” Tyler says, jumping topics. Jamie blushes, ducks his
head.
“Oh god, that was horrible.”
“Your hair’s horrible,” Tyler counters, like that makes sense at all. “Don’t be
a dumbass. That took balls of steel.”
“I tried,” Jamie says. “To talk about the things that matter.”
“That was good,” Tyler says, and they sit in silence for another comfortable
stretch of time.
“How’s my girl?” Tyler asks at last, and Jamie chuckles.
“She’s fine. Sitting in my lap, being a pain in my ass. The dog-sitters have
spoiled her. She’s on the furniture all the time now, getting hair everywhere.”
The mirth he intends must make it through because Tyler laughs. “The dog-
sitters, yeah.”
They talk, and Jamie lets himself float on the comfort he finds in Tyler’s
voice. Lets himself finally believe that Tyler really is fine. He’s whole and
happy and wants to call Jamie anyway.
“Hey,” Tyler says at last, “I know you’ve probably got practice tomorrow. Would
it be okay if I came up to watch? Meet you for lunch after?”
“Yes!” Jamie can’t find it in himself to be embarrassed by how fast and
enthusiastic his response is. “Yeah. I mean sure. It’ll take a while to change
after, and I was gonna do the meet and greet line after, but yeah. Of course.
Anytime.”
“Okay.” Jamie hears the smile in Tyler’s voice, the warm welcome. “Okay. I’ll
come up then. There’s an On The Border right around the corner. I’ll meet you
there whenever you’re done?”
“Yeah,” Jamie breathes. This is so much more than he hoped for. “Yeah, it’s
a…plan.”
“Okay,” Tyler says again, and Jamie says okay and they sit there listening to
each other breathe until Tyler finally laughs.
“Tomorrow,” he says, and hangs up.
“Tomorrow,” Jamie tells Marshall. Holy shit. Tyler. Tomorrow.
===============
Jamie watches the stands as much as he can while on the ice for practice,
looking for Tyler, for the slouch of his shoulder, for the flash of pink
Mohawk. He looks, but doesn’t see him, and he’s got a damn job to do here, so
he turns his attention to the ice, follows the coach’s instructions, fits
himself into the swirl and flow of shooting drills and passing drills and power
play drills.
He lingers, when the rest of the team has already trickled into the room to
shower and change, but Tyler doesn’t come to the glass, doesn’t seem to be
there at all.
He wants to text, after he’s clean and in fresh clothes. Wants to ask if Tyler
made it, if they’re still on for lunch, but he wants to put the disappointment
off for as long as he can. Maybe Tyler missed the practice but will be at the
restaurant.
He goes out the public door, Sharpie in hand. Some of the fans step away from
the rope when he comes by, following Robidas, like they don’t want Jamie’s gay
cooties or autograph on their stuff. Jamie has just run out of energy to waste
being offended by those. Fuck them. He pretends he doesn’t see. If they don’t
want him, he doesn’t want them either.
“Mr Benn.” The voice is soft, the pre-teen squeezing his way between two older
kids to hold out his magazine for Jamie to sign. It’s the Advocate issue with
Jamie inside, the interview where he talks about young people getting bullied
and worse, how things need to change to help the kids coming up through the
system.
Jamie takes the magazine. “Who should I sign it to?” he asks, and the kid
shuffles his feet, looks down but he’s smiling.
“Danny. Uh. Dan. I like how you play.”
Jamie nods and signs, Dan, Thanks for being a Fan, Jamie Benn, under the photo
of himself, puts a quick star under it.
“You play?” Jamie asks, and Danny shakes his head.
“Nah. Soccer. But I just thought you were awesome to do what you did, and I
started watching the Stars for you. Hockey is pretty cool.”
Even with Jamie being as out as a person can be, the kid dances around the
words, doesn’t say it outright. But that’s okay. Jamie doesn’t ask if Danny is
gay, just gives him some time while the rest of the team goes past him.
“Thanks for coming today,” Jamie finally says and moves on. There is one like
this for every five that mutter ‘faggot’ or step between Jamie and their sons
or hide their jerseys from his autograph. He doesn’t know what he’d do if they
weren’t there, boys and sometimes girls, telling him he made a difference in
their lives.
He doesn’t rush, never rushes this part. Signs everything that’s offered to
him. Looks behind the front row to make sure there’s no shy ones lingering
back. When he’s done, when he’s got them all, he finally goes through the
garage door, out to his truck.
On my way, he texts to Tyler, and doesn’t wait for a reply before he starts the
engine and the air conditioner and heads for the road. It had been cool in the
morning, but as the afternoon sun peeks through it’s warming up. Texas weather
is not to be trusted.
Here. Got a table, Tyler has texted back and Jamie breathes out a sigh of
relief. He heads in, tells the hostess he’s meeting someone and looks over her
to glance around for Tyler, looking for the bright splash of his hair.
A man stands up from a booth, faces the door and waves, and that…it’s Tyler,
his hair short all over and dark.
“I see him,” Jamie mumbles and goes over, drifting through like he’s dazed.
It’s only been a couple months. Tyler shouldn’t be so changed. He’s put on
weight, good weight, lean strong muscle. Maybe a tiny bit of height too. His
proportions are a man’s now, his neck no longer so slender, his shoulders
broader. He’s wearing a dark t-shirt, a splash of white bandage peeking out
from under the left sleeve.
He’s beautiful, but it’s more than that. The sight of him is just so damn
welcome that Jamie’s chest aches.
Tyler stares up at Jamie, like Jamie isn’t the only one who’s been aching for
this, for the two of them in the same room.
“Hey,” Tyler murmurs, and Jamie slides into the booth across from him.
“You cut your hair,” Jamie says, dumb with the sight of him.
“Yeah,” Tyler says, ducks his head a little and then raises his chin almost
defiantly.
“It looks good,” Jamie says, hoping he’s allowed to.
“Thanks,” Tyler says, and Jamie flips the menu open just to have something to
do.
“I.” Jamie licks his lower lip, uncertain for a moment, but it has to be said.
“I know I said it in the text, and the note. And your voice mail. But.” He
raises his gaze to meet Tyler’s. “I need to tell you that I’m sorry. I didn’t
think you were that. What I said. And I shouldn’t have said it. And I’m sorry I
did.”
Tyler nods, lets Jamie say the words. He looks down at his hands resting on the
table, gathers his thoughts before he speaks. “That really fucking hurt,” he
says, eyes down. Jamie aches with regret, with shame. “It hurt and I didn’t
have anything to cushion the blow, y’know? I didn’t. I couldn’t even say to
myself ‘no see, I’ve got a job’ or anything. Of course I believed you thought
that, because if I wasn’t, what the hell else was I?”
Jamie shakes his head, denying but not interrupting.
“I had to go,” Tyler says like it’s him that’s apologizing. Jamie breathes
through it, afraid that the next words are going to be I have to stay gone. “I
had to figure out some things. I had to be more than your boy.”
“Did you?” Jamie dares to ask. “Figure things out?”
The waitress drifts by but apparently can recognize an unready table and
diverts her path away from them.
Tyler shrugs. “Some. Enough. I’ve got family now. Ron and David. I go to church
twice a week and people know me there. I’m not getting deported, but I can’t
work legally yet, so I’m doing some volunteer stuff and a couple under-the-
table handyman jobs for friends.”
It doesn’t seem a whole lot different than what Tyler had going on before, but
Jamie figures it’s not his impressions of the situation that matter.
“You happy?” Jamie asks, and Tyler smiles, soft and easy. Not pushing for a
reaction, not trying to get Jamie horny or off-balance or flustered like he
used to. This is where the change has happened, Jamie thinks; it’s in the quiet
confidence, how settled Tyler is in himself.
“Yeah,” Tyler says, and waves the waitress over. They order their drinks and a
plate of avocado fries to split, just like they used to.
Jamie takes a minute to swallow that, that Tyler is happy without him. He’s
glad, because he loves Tyler, wants the best for him, but…
“Jamie,” Tyler says, gentle. “I’m happy, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think
about you. That I didn’t miss you.”
Jamie takes a deep breath and nods and he’ll be okay, he will.
Tyler reaches a hand out, nudges his knuckles against Jamie’s.
“You remember Philip and Tom?” Jamie asks, desperate for something to talk
about, some change in the conversation. “That came over for dinner and video
games that time?”
Tyler smiles. “Yeah. I remember them.”
“They asked if it was you I had been with. They had a bet running. I told them.
I hope…”
Tyler shrugs. “Not a big deal. I’m not the one that was in the closet.” He
winces then, and Jamie doesn’t know what could be wrong. “I want you to know I
didn’t tell anybody. About you, or me and you. I mean you came out on your own,
but Dion and Eduardo met you before I even knew who you were, and Ron and David
guessed, I think. From me watching the interviews.”
Jamie groans. “Those were horrible. Why would you do that to yourself?”
Tyler tips his head. “It was the closest I could be to you right then.”
And if they’re doing full disclosure, Jamie has a confession of his own.
“Jordie found your stash. Under the sink.”
Tyler frowns at the name, and Jamie isn’t sure if he should have brought it up.
“You still got your key?”
Tyler reaches for his pocket and Jamie holds up his hand. “No, I don’t want it
back. Just. I made Jordie put it back where he found it. It’s there. For you or
your friends if anybody ever needs it. My apartment is there, if you ever need
it.”
“You are so weird,” Tyler complains, and Jamie can’t argue with that.
It’s easier then, to make small talk, to tell Tyler about how the season is
going, how well some of the Stars are taking having a gay teammate, and the
often hilarious ways the others are failing. He says how hard it is, to lose
and lose and lose, only winning one in four games, one in three if they’re
lucky.
“You looked good today at practice,” Tyler says, talks about a nice pass Jamie
made, about his goal in the shootout drill. Jamie feels less frustrated with
himself and more at his team by the time Tyler’s done, but it helps.
Tyler tells him about jogging with Cash on the days that are warm enough, how
he thinks nobody would say anything even if he still had the pink hair, with a
dog like that beside him. He complains about helping a friend move into a dorm
room, and the endless pile of Ikea furniture he’d put together. Tyler pouts and
shows his thumb, and Jamie doesn’t see the blister he claims to have, but gives
him mock-sympathy anyway.
Tyler tells him that he had a birthday, with guests and cake and icecream,
presents and everything like it’s hard to believe. Jamie wishes he could have
been there, could have seen Tyler like that, the center of attention, of warm
family life.
“Me and Dion and Eduardo ended up hiding in my room for half the night,” he
says with a rueful shrug. “It was kind of a lot, after a while.”
“How’ve they been?” Jamie asks, “I saw them, early December maybe. Tried to
help out a bit.”
Tyler shrugs. “They’re still around. They had to ‘break up’ to get some help
from the Salvation Army to make it through last month, but they’re out of that
program now, back together and making it work most of the time. They don’t have
a phone, so.”
Jamie nods. He’s seen the pre-paid phones in the convenience store, and they’re
only like a hundred bucks. He thinks he could buy one and keep it in his car in
case he sees them again. It feels like it would make their lives and Tyler’s
easier.
They talk and get caught up and it’s painfully awkward at times, but if Tyler’s
willing to suffer through it to talk to Jamie, then Jamie sure as hell can
survive it too.
They order and eat, and Jamie pokes at his rice for a long time after
everything else is gone, trying to draw it out. “You want to come back by the
apartment, visit with Marshall?” he offers, and Tyler looks regretful as he
shakes his head.
“I can’t today. David’s at the bookstore around the corner, and I’m driving him
to his doctor’s appointment up here at two.”
Jamie nods, pushes his plate away.
“Maybe next week?” Tyler says, and he sounds hopeful, like there’s any way he
could screw this up so bad Jamie wouldn’t want him.
Jamie doesn’t know what his schedule looks like—he remembers saying yes to an
interview but can’t remember when it is. “Can I text you?” he asks, “When I
know when I’m free?”
Tyler nods and puts a twenty on top of the bill before Jamie can take it,
paying his half and then some. Jamie puts his money on top and it’s a hell of a
tip but he can’t be bothered waiting for change. Tyler stands up and Jamie gets
to his feet too. He wants to…something. He’s not sure, and then Tyler’s arms
are open and he’s close and Jamie wraps him in a hug, a little tight, a little
long. Breathes in the smell of Tyler’s hair, some shampoo Jamie doesn’t know,
one that isn’t in Jamie’s shower. Tyler holds him back, strong arms wrapped
over Jamie’s.
“Text me anytime,” Tyler says, “It doesn’t have to be about when I should come
over.”
Jamie squeezes him one last time and then steps back. “I will.”
Tyler slips from his arms and leaves and Jamie smiles, his heart full of maybe,
full of possibility, full of hope.
 
=====================
Wednesday at 3? the text from Jamie reads, and Tyler stares at it for a long
time before he can figure out what to say. On the one hand, yes. He’s
definitely free then, and he knows Jamie will only have a few hours at most,
before the game that night, so it’s a very set length of time which is good. On
the other hand, he can’t get it out of his head, how great it felt to have
Jamie’s arms around him, his strength and warmth and he just. He’s scared if
they’re alone in Jamie’s apartment together that he’ll go too far, too fast,
and fuck everything up. He’s never had to play a long game, never had to pass
on good stuff today for the sake of making it last, for getting a whole lot of
good down the road.
He checks the weather and rereads Jamie’s text. Meet you in the park? he asks,
knowing that Jamie will know which one. He gets a smiley face back, and feels a
wave of relief. They’ll figure this out. Somehow. Together.
==========
He debates for a while, but ends up bringing Cash with him, the big moose. He
smears the back windows of the car with drool and keeps bonking the side glass
when he tries to put his head through it. Tyler’s trying to get him used to
riding though, because if they only put him in the car to go to the vet, he’ll
stop cooperating, and if he stops cooperating it will be a pain in the ass to
get a dog that big in the car. He’s kind of bony still, but getting heavier and
stronger by the day.
Jamie is already there on a bench when Tyler parks and gets Cash out, throwing
a ball for Marshall. “Easy,” Tyler warns Cash, bumping his shoulder to get his
attention. “Shh shh shh, easy.” He’s not sure Cash is ready to go off-leash,
and he really doesn’t want him learning he can yank the cord out of Tyler’s
hand whenever he feels like it.
Jamie stands up to watch them approach, eyes wide. “You said he was a big dog,
but holy shit.”
Tyler laughs, and Cash sits when he stops moving. “Good boy, good good boy,” he
says, and scritches behind Cash’s ears.
“I’m thinking about getting some inline skates, letting him pull me around the
neighborhood,” Tyler says, and then Marshall is there, tail tucked up under her
body slinking up, scared of a bigger dog but she’s just gotta get close to
Tyler, has to sniff him.
Tyler’s eyes prickle and he passes Cash’s leash to Jamie as he goes down to his
knees. “Oh baby. Oh look at you, you’re all grown up.” And she is, mostly. She
doesn’t look like a puppy anymore—she’s still filling out, but she’s got the
height to match her paws now, damp nose nudging in under his chin and her tail
thwapping a mile a minute as he pets her, clings to her fur. He takes the face-
washing she gives him with a grimace, and finally stands up, joins Jamie on the
park bench.
“I was scared she’d forgotten me,” he admits.
Jamie snorts. “You’re not very forgettable.”
Tyler smiles and ducks his head, and Cash chooses that moment to remind them
that he’s there, putting both big front paws on Jamie’s knee and leaning in to
sniff his face.
It’s a good afternoon, just the two of them and the dogs. Cash gets along with
Marshall, sniffing her as she rolls on her back but not bullying her.
Jamie’s shoulder brushes against Tyler’s, a spot of warmth in an afternoon
that’s just on the brisk side of comfortable.
“If you ever decide you want Marshall back…” Jamie starts once, but his voice
isn’t right; he sounds like it would gut him to lose her and Tyler won’t do
that to him.
“Nah. I’ve got all the dog I can handle right now.”
Jamie nods and they spend the hour sitting and talking, watching Marshall fetch
and Cash slobber for his chance at the ball.
It’s good. Spending time with Jamie, it’s really good.
=========
Rona nd David want to meet u
Jamie can’t think of any summons more ominous.
why? he texts back, but this is one of those conversations he wants to hear
Tyler’s voice for so he calls.
“Why?” he asks when Tyler answers.
“Because they think it’s nineteen ten and they need to ‘vet my gentleman
caller’ or some shit.” Jamie can hear the fond exasperation in his voice. Tyler
has been complaining about his reading assignments lately, and Jamie is tickled
to hear it’s crept into his day-to-day language.
“Am I?” Jamie asks, and he can’t resist the chance to tease, even as his heart
is pounding at the thought of it, that they’re dating, that Tyler wants them to
be dating. “Your gentleman caller? Does this mean you’ll allow me to court
you?”
Tyler growls. “Tuesday night at five, yes or no?”
“What, no written invitation? I suppose I could attend.”
Tyler huffs, but like he’s putting a lot of effort into not being amused.
“Tuesday at five. Bring a pie. Not from a grocery store unless it’s Central
Market. Go to that bakery on the corner or something. I mean it.”
Jamie would laugh, except that Tyler does seem pretty damn serious. “Yeah. I
can do that. Anything else?”
“No, just. If they get too out of hand with the interrogation, I might have to
slip you out the back door, so keep your keys on you at all times.”
Jamie smiles, cradles the phone between shoulder and ear. “Hey. The only one I
need to impress is you, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then I can take whatever they can dish out. It’s okay. It’s…I’m glad there’s
somebody out there looking out for you.”
“Remember you said that,” Tyler tells him.
 
==============
The address Tyler sent him to is a solid one-story ranch style house, and Jamie
parks on the curb and walks up to the door. He rings the bell, and isn’t sure
he has the right place until he hears Cash’s deep woof from inside.
The man who opens the door is tall, and standing a step above Jamie makes him
even taller. Thin and elderly, his white hair swept back and gelled down. He’s
wearing a crisp white shirt and dark slacks, and Jamie is glad he didn’t dress
down for this.
“You must be Jamie,” the man says, eyes bright. He offers his hand and Jamie is
glad he didn’t talk Jordie into buying a bottle of wine, so he only has the box
of pie to juggle to take it. Cash sniffs at it like Jamie brought it for him,
and Jamie holds it up higher, out of reach of curious noses.
Music plays from inside, slow soft jazz, and Jamie feels like he’s fallen
through a time warp, into decor and manners forty years out of date.
“I’m Ron. It’s nice to finally meet you.” His smile is warm, but his eyes are
bright and alert, and Jamie doesn’t expect much to get past him. He wonders how
much these men know, what exactly Tyler has told them.
“Thanks,” Jamie says, dipping his head and stepping in when Ron moves back to
welcome him. There’s another man in the living room, and Ron introduces him as
David.
And then Tyler steps in, a hand towel thrown over the shoulder of his powder-
blue henley. He fusses Cash into a different room and shuts the door and then
turns his attention back to Jamie, his smile open and sweet and just a little
bit uncertain.
“Hey,” Jamie says, and Tyler nods through the door he had come in from.
“You can put the pie in here.”
Jamie steps through and puts the pie on the counter. The kitchen smells
amazing, and Jamie feels a twinge for all the days he came home with take-out
or cooked his own pathetic eggs.
“What’s for dinner?” he asks.
“Herb roasted chicken and this recipe I found that has wild rice and grapes in
it.”
“It smells amazing,” Jamie says, reaches to touch Tyler’s elbow, just a brush
of his thumb through the shirt. “You okay?”
Tyler chuckles and shakes his head. “Yeah. I just haven’t done much
entertaining before, and this feels like a big deal.”
Jamie nudges Tyler’s shoulder, turns him so they’re facing each other,
carefully wraps him up in his arms and holds him. Tyler stands stiff and
resistant for a breath, and then sighs and leans into the hug.
“Can I help set the table or anything?”
Tyler snorts. “It’s been set since noon.”
Jamie slides his hand up, cups the back of Tyler’s neck, just feeling the solid
warmth of him.
“Here, fill the glasses with ice and take them out. Dining room is that way.”
“Sure,” Jamie says, and does as he’s asked. It’s easier then, letting Ron tell
him where to sit and wait while Tyler brings out the dishes. Everything looks
and smells amazing, and Jamie almost digs in but Tyler catches his eye and
gives him a minute shake of his head and Jamie waits.
The other three bow their heads so Jamie does too. David murmurs out a “For
this meal we are about to receive” but before he wraps it up he goes off
script, “We are so grateful to have Tyler here with us, and to have this chance
to meet Jamie and get to know him.”
Jamie looks up after the Amen and Tyler’s rolling his eyes. He makes a good
show of teenage impatience with everything parental, but there’s a teasing edge
to it, like it’s a role he’s pretending to play, like he eats up every bit of
chiding and complimenting and guidance these two offer.
The food tastes as wonderful as it smells, and Jamie isn’t shy with his
compliments.
“Ron helped me test out recipes,” Tyler says, and Ron tsks at him and waves off
the comment.
“So Jamie,” David says when the food is half-gone. “What’s the average career
of a professional hockey player look like?”
Jamie blots his lips with the cloth napkin. “I uh, like my career?” he asks,
just to be sure what David’s asking. David gives him a ‘go ahead’ nod.
“Ideally, I get lots of points and stay healthy and keep playing until I’m
thirty-five,” Jamie says. “But I know it doesn’t work out like that for
everybody, so I try to be smart with my money, mostly.” Exorbitant payouts to
private investigators notwithstanding. “If I don’t produce at the NHL level,
I’ll get sent down to the AHL, but that’s still a good paycheck. Enough to save
for college and support…whatever I need to be supporting while I play. If I can
make it through even my three-year rookie contract without getting sent down or
injured, I should have a good nest-egg.”
David nods like he’s satisfied. “It sounds like you’ve thought about it,” he
says like it’s a compliment.
Jamie shrugs. “I wasn’t drafted high. I love hockey and I want to play for as
long as I’m good at it, but it always felt like a long-shot.”
“Seems sensible,” Ron agrees, and they go back to eating again.
“What’re your plans for summer?” David asks, and Jamie puts his fork down
again.
“I’m not sure…” he starts. It’s not looking likely that the Stars will make the
playoffs. It’s coming down to an increasingly improbable number of wins for
them and losses for a large number of teams for them to claw their way to the
wildcard slot. “They asked if I’d be interested in playing with the Texas Stars
for the playoffs, but I haven’t heard for sure yet. I want to spend a few weeks
at home, at least. Other than that, I guess it would depend on if any plans
come up…”
He can’t hold himself from looking over at Tyler, seeing what he thinks of
that. Tyler’s eyes are down, and Jamie isn’t sure if he doesn’t want Jamie to
leave, or doesn’t want him to stay.
“Family is important…” David says, and Jamie takes the chance to stuff a bite
in his mouth. “How’re your parents taking your coming out? Are they supporting
you?”
It’s one of the most open acknowledgments of what Jamie has done, and it sounds
kind of strange, the words actually being spoken.
“Yeah, they. They’re worried about me, being in Texas, and so far from home. My
sister keeps threatening to fly down and walk me to the arena, and my brother
has been coming in from Allen as often as he can.”
Tyler’s lips press together, but Jamie doesn’t want to take back the mention of
Jordie. Despite his fuck up, he’s still Jamie’s brother, still on his side.
“So, what kind of pie did you bring?” Ron asks, and Jamie jumps on the
distraction.
“Uh, apple? It looked fancy. The top is a spiral of sliced apples.”
Tyler tries to smother a grin, and Jamie resists poking his tongue out at him.
Yes, he took Tyler’s advice, yes, he went to that bakery, yes, Tyler is always
right.
“Let’s see if it tastes as good as it looks,” Ron suggests, and Tyler goes to
the kitchen for a knife and server and a stack of dessert plates.
They eat the pie and Jamie thinks he’s got out easy, until Ron and Tyler stand
and start clearing the table and David says, “Come back to my office, Jamie,
let’s have a sherry.”
“I’m not twenty-one yet,” Jamie tries, but David looks completely unimpressed.
“I’m sure we can bend the rules just this once.”
“David,” Tyler says, warning and pleading at once.
“I’m not going to traumatize the boy,” David soothes him (Jamie is not
reassured). “We just need to have a discussion.”
Jamie pushes his chair back and stands up. Gives Tyler a shrug and a smile and
a ‘how bad can it be?’ twitch of his eyebrows.
Tyler’s grimace says that it’s Jamie’s funeral, but he goes anyway, down a
narrow hall to a small and manly room, packed with a desk and leather chairs,
piles of papers and a wall of filing cabinets, concept drawings of now-classic
Dallas skyscrapers framed on the walls.
“Have a seat,” David says, and flusters around with some paperwork, clearing a
spot for a bottle and two glasses that he pulls out of the desk. “I didn’t
invite you back here to berate you.”
Jamie sits, and takes the glass when it’s handed to him. He tries a cautious
sip of the dark liquid that David pours inside. He’s never had sherry before.
It’s a little thick, a little sweet for his taste, but he doesn’t complain.
“Tyler is very taken with you,” David comments, leaning his cane against the
desk and lowering himself into a chair.
It sparks in Jamie’s chest, to hear someone else say it. He hadn’t been sure,
what the hell they were doing since that day Tyler called him again, the time
spent in the park or meeting for coffee or lunch. It’s been a strange dance
that Jamie is content to let Tyler lead, but it feels good to hear that there’s
something behind it, some chance for the future.
“Ron was very taken with me, when we first met,” David says, sitting back and
sipping his drink. “He was Tyler’s age, and I was…older. Older than you are
now, at least. He was working the counter at this diner where I ate breakfast
every morning.” His expression goes soft and a little sad, remembering.
“Things were so different back then, and yet he made it easy to make the first
move, to ask him out. I took him to this little cinema that I’d never been to,
on the far side of town. Someplace nobody who knew me would see me out with
this boy. He was living in this shoebox of an apartment, tiny and dirty, and of
course I did away with that right away, put him up in a posh high rise flat. I
came by when I could. I had a very demanding job, with a lot of entertaining
and socializing. Clients to wine and dine, a different woman on my arm every
night.”
David shakes his head. “I thought he was happy. He didn’t have to work, didn’t
have to worry about money. He just had to be there when I wanted him. It didn’t
seem like much to ask at the time.”
The drink is sitting hard in Jamie’s stomach, and the story sounds so familiar,
how glad he was to have Tyler there whenever Jamie wanted him, making his house
a home.
“I almost lost him,” David says, “He was so isolated, and lonely, and bored.
There were so many pills and so much booze back in those days, doctors who
would prescribe anything you wanted. When he left the hospital, he said he was
leaving me. That being with me was killing him.”
Jamie wonders if it had been that bad for Tyler, if it would have been
eventually.
“By all rights he should have left,” David sighs. “I did not deserve the risk
he took by staying. I did everything in my power to make him happy, but…it
wasn’t easy. He got his own apartment again, took a job that meant I barely saw
him. Got evicted and moved into my spare bedroom. A lot of it was worsened by
my staying in the closet, but it took years, for me to accept him as my
partner, my strength. Can you imagine how diminished my life would have been
without him in it?”
Jamie shakes his head; he doesn’t know them, but he knows how much duller his
own world has been, these long months alone.
“You’re thinking about your Tyler,” David says. “Good. Your situation is so
different than ours was, but there are still dangers, still so many ways for
people who love each other to hurt each other.”
“I know. I know, and I want…I want him to be happy,” Jamie says.
David nods like they’ve reached an accord.
“Never underestimate him; he’s a strong young man and he’ll be better off
without you than you will be without him. Make it as easy as possible for him
to forget the gap in your income. Give him more than just room, give
himencouragementto do the things that make him happy and connected and engaged
with the world. Sometimes these things will take away from the time he has with
you, but you’ll both be healthier for it in the long run.”
Jamie swallows and nods. Takes the words to heart.
===================
============
Jamie feels shell-shocked coming out of David’s office, like he spent well more
than the half hour or so he’d actually been there.
Tyler is in the kitchen when Jamie finds him, second servings of pie and
glasses of milk for the two of them in the small breakfast nook.
“Oh god, he didn’t give you a sex talk, did he?” Tyler asks, eyes wide but his
lips twitching as he tries to contain his mirth and Jamie feels some of the
weight lift from his shoulders.
“Nah,” Jamie says, shakes his head. He can hear the jingle of the dog’s collar
in the living room, the television’s audio a low background sound to replace
the jazz. It reminds him of his grandparent’s house, a soft, safe place.
They sit and eat their pie, Tyler’s bony ankle against Jamie’s under the table.
“Want to walk Cash with me?” Tyler asks when they’re done.
Jamie nods. “I’ll rinse the dishes if you want to get his leash.”
It’s cool out, Dallas in March liable to turn from t-shirt weather to near-
freezing on a whim of nature. Not so cold that Jamie wishes for a jacket, but
enough that he’s glad of his long sleeves. His knuckles brush against Tyler’s
as they walk, and Tyler slips his palm against Jamie’s and holds on.
“You okay?” Tyler asks as they walk, and Jamie realizes he’s been quiet,
mulling it over.
“Lot to think about,” he says.
“Ron tells me I have to figure out how to balance my pride and my safety.”
Jamie glances at him but can’t read his face in the dim light of the wide-
spaced street lamps.
“Safety?” he asks, because he’s not sure where that comes in.
“My…I don’t know. My not feeling like I couldn’t leave again if I needed to.
And having a backup plan if this doesn’t all work out.”
Jamie presses his lips together, squeezes Tyler’s hand and hopes he’s conveying
his support, his hope that it does work out, his commitment to making that
happen no matter how much work it takes.
“They…” Tyler’s voice is rough, and Jamie kind of wants to hug him, but he
doesn’t stop walking so Jamie doesn’t. “Ron says there’ll be a little left over
for me. In. In their wills. But I don’t want…”
“Hey,” Jamie says, soft. “Old people talk about that kind of thing. It doesn’t
mean it’s coming right away, unless…”
Tyler shakes his head. Cash sniffs at a tree and Tyler slows down to let him
water it.
“Neither of them is sick or anything. Just. It freaks me out when they talk
about it. They’re old, Jamie. It scares me.”
Jamie slides one arm around his shoulders, a half-hug that seems less pushy
than a full one would have been, and he’s rewarded by Tyler leaning in against
him. He wants to ask how long Tyler’s known these guys, why they’d be talking
about leaving their inheritance to Tyler, but it doesn’t seem like something he
can butt his nose into— not yet at least.
“I want to be with you,” Tyler says, simple, clear. Just the slightest emphasis
on the word ‘want’. It’s scary, because want is so much more tenuous than need.
Want can change its mind; want can move on to something more interesting. Need
though, is nothing to do with love, and Jamie will take want over need, every
time.
“I want that too,” Jamie says, being so careful to use enough words, the right
words.
Tyler’s shoulder bumps his and they loop around the block and head back to the
front porch light.
Jamie kisses him there, leaning in slow so Tyler can give him a sign if it
isn’t okay. A soft brush of lips. Tyler opens for it soft and sweet for just a
moment before his hand goes up to the back of Jamie’s neck, holds him there as
he presses in, firm and sure. There is a quiet confidence to Tyler now, and the
kiss isn’t a challenge, isn’t a dare. It’s Tyler enjoying Jamie and Jamie
enjoying Tyler.
Cash whines and nudges in between them and Tyler’s smile is wry when they pull
apart.
“I should go in,” he says, and Jamie gets it, that they’re going slow, taking
things so very carefully.
“Okay. I’ll text you?”
Tyler nods. “Yeah. Anytime.”
He leans in over the dog and gives Jamie one more quick kiss before turning and
going into the house.
“Yeah, okay,” Jamie says to himself and heads to his truck, a smile on his
lips.
=============
Tyler sleeps over for the first time in April, the night after the last Stars
home game— a win, too little, too late, but a fucking win finally. Jamie’s goal
and assist on the two regulation points for the night and Jamie will take it,
is so glad he can come home to Tyler with the pride of a win in his chest.
They don’t have sex, but Tyler cooked that honey salmon that he makes that’s so
good. They watch a movie on TV and Marshall cuddles with them on the couch, and
when Jamie is yawning and struggling to keep his eyes open Tyler asks “Hey, is
it cool if I stay?” And of course, of course it’s okay.
Jamie wakes up in the morning with Tyler in his arms and it feels like the
pieces are starting to fit together again.
=========
The Texas Stars want Jamie to play in the Calder Cup playoffs, and Jamie jumps
at the chance, for more hockey, more experience, more Texas.
“Come down with me,” Jamie offers, “Just for the first two games. We can drive
down together and then you can have the truck to come back up to Dallas.”
He expects a no, but Tyler takes the time to consider.
“I’ll get you your own hotel room,” Jamie adds, not knowing if that’s making it
more or less likely that Tyler will agree. “I would really like it if you were
there.”
Tyler says yes, and they get each other off for the first time since they got
back together, there in a Cedar Park hotel room after the second win.
“Fuck,” Tyler whispers after, slick with sweat and collapsed on Jamie’s chest.
“Missed that. Missed you.”
Jamie traces over the roots and branches of the tattoo on Tyler’s arm, and
Tyler traces the three sides of the rainbow triangle on the inside of Jamie’s
wrist, right where it will always show between glove and sleeve when he’s on
the ice. They spend the night relearning each other, the slow and sweet and the
filthy and rough.
===========
Texas sweeps the IceHogs in four, and that gives Jamie almost ten days to just
hang out in Dallas, to go to the gym with Tyler, for them to hit the park with
the dogs, for lunches and brunches and dinners with Ron and David like some
adorable double-date. It’s good, and easy, and Jamie thinks about home, the
summer coming up.
===========
The rest of the playoffs is a grind, seven games against Chicago, seven against
Hamilton. The Hersey Bears are a beast of a team and Texas still takes them to
six.
And then it’s over, and Jamie spends another week in Dallas to recover before
Tyler tells him to go home, see his family.
“I’ll be here,” Tyler promises, and Jamie goes.
They talk and text almost every day until they’re together again.
==========
“Move in with me,” Jamie asks when he gets back for training camp.
“No,” Tyler says, “Ron and David need me.” David had pneumonia over the summer,
and Ron doesn’t feel safe driving anymore because of his vision.
“Okay,” Jamie tells him. “I understand. The offer’s always open.”
They find the time for each other, nights when Tyler comes over after dinner
and Jamie follows him home for breakfast, lunch breaks between morning skate
and Jamie’s pre-game naps. They work to make it work, and it’s worth it.
==========
Ron falls in the shower.
Tyler calls Jamie from the hospital. Ron has a broken hip, broken collar-bone
and a mild concussion.
“We planned for this a long time ago,” David tells Tyler, and Jamie holds
Tyler’s hand. Ron and David picked out the nursing home years ago, for when one
of them became too fragile to be cared for at home. Tyler living with them
pushed that date out, gave them half a year or more, but the time is here. They
want to stay together.
They say Tyler can stay in the house, and he does for a couple weeks. He moves
some stuff around, with Ron’s blessing. Dion and Eduardo move in.
Jamie asks him again, to come live with him, and this time Tyler says yes.
===========
“I need your help,” Tyler says that summer. Jamie’s spending a month in
Victoria, and Tyler has come up for a week with him. They’re walking on the
rocky and wind-swept beach, hands joined, shoulders bumping.
“Yeah?” Jamie asks, pretty sure there’s nothing Tyler could want that he
wouldn’t give. “With what?”
Tyler chews on his lower lip. “I don’t want you to like—do it all. That’s not
what I’m asking for. Not for you to fund it, just…”
Jamie bumps him and Tyler smiles at himself, how silly he’s being.
“So there’s the house,” he says. “I talked to Ron and David about this, and
they agree, but their income is pretty fixed at this point, so that’s all they
can do. But I thought. Okay, there’s three bedrooms and two baths, and the
garage would be an easy conversion. That could house like eight kids and a
house-mom type person. Kids like I used to be.”
He glances at Jamie and Jamie nods.
“But I don’t just want to house them,” Tyler goes on, and Jamie wonders how
long he’s been planning this. “I want this to be a stepping-off point. A place
to stay while they get their GEDs and do some volunteer work so they’ve got
something for a job application. Room for couples, so they don’t have to split
up to find a bed. Maybe I could find a way to get an intern counselor or
something to work with them a couple days a week. I’m not. Not qualified to run
it, but I thought I could be there sometimes, while you’re playing. Help them
with homework or drive them to jobs or whatever.”
“It sounds like a hell of a plan,” Jamie says. “What can I do?”
==============
Ken settles back in his chair and the tiny red light on the camera goes on.
“Jamie, it’s been five years since we sat down like this; how have you been
since then?”
Jamie squeezes Tyler’s hand and sits up straighter. “Good. Really good.”
He couldn’t have imagined it, back when he did his first interview after coming
out, that he would be so happy, that his life would be so full. He glances at
Tyler, so strong and handsome and sure of himself. He’s nothing like any of the
other hockey wives, but he’s got the charisma, the personality, to walk through
the doors that Jamie’s name opens for him and make friends, to turn
acquaintances into sponsors for Marshall’s House.
Jamie tries to picture how his life would have gone if his phone hadn’t died on
his first solo trip to Dallas. If he’d never met Tyler in a run-down Denny’s.
If he’d never felt Tyler’s touch or seen his smile.
He’s not sure where he’d be without Tyler. If he ever would have come out. If
he’d have made captain without Tyler behind the scenes supporting him.
He’s sure of one thing; that he wouldn’t change the way it all worked out.
Wouldn’t change it for the world.
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