Walking Wounded

by Lauren Gilley

  “Probably,” Luke says, shooting for smartass…but coming off as pathetic, more than anything.

  Hal comes to stand in front of him, right up close, like always, and Luke wonders why it took him so long to see that Hal wants this closeness, that he has distinct not-friend-like feelings about them sharing space like this. “Why?” he asks, and cups a hand loosely around Luke’s neck, a sweet, possessive touch that draws them even closer together. He grins. “Just can’t help it?”

  Luke swallows, throat suddenly dry. “Something like that.” He doesn’t think he can explain his complicated need not to feel like Hal’s kept little woman. And also the strange reticence that lingers; he’s afraid to let himself believe that this is it, that it’s happening, that he has Hal in this way now.

  “Hey,” Hal says, inching even closer. Close enough for Luke to feel his breath against his hairline. “This doesn’t have to be home sweet home. We can look at other places. Somewhere that we pick out together.”

  Luke can’t describe the awful tenderness that unfolds in his chest to hear Hal offer something like that. Like finding a new home in Georgetown wouldn’t be a hellish chore. Like he doesn’t mind giving up his beautiful, modern apartment so Luke can feel like he has a hand in choosing their home.

  “Nah,” he says, voice rougher than he wants it to be. “If we have a fight, I can always sleep on the couch.”

  Hal leans their foreheads together.

  “Or make you sleep on the couch,” Luke amends.

  “The offer stands, though.”

  “I hear you.”

  Traffic passes on the street outside, a gentle shushing made sharper by the cold, dry air. Faint sounds of other inhabitants drift up through the floor. They breathe, a quiet, complimentary rhythm.

  “I promised I’d call our moms when we got back safe,” Hal says, softly, like he doesn’t want to disturb the moment.

  “Hmm. Sandy too, probably.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You probably have all kinds of paperwork to deal with at work,” Luke says.

  “And you’ve got a book to write,” Hal counters.

  They acknowledge both truths with silence.

  Luke takes a deep breath. “I love you so much it actually hurts.”

  Hal says, “I want us to get married.”

  Luke stretches up the last fraction and kisses him.

  He won’t ever get tired of this. Kissing Hal is like the first breath after a long swim every time; oxygen straight to his starved bloodstream. It’s the quiet after a storm, a warm hearth on a cold night. It transcends the exercises of the lips, and teeth, and tongues. And that’s even before Hal puts his hands on him, and reels him in close, so there’s no air between them, just the rustle of impatient clothes and the competing rhythms of heartbeats.

  “Hal,” Luke gasps against his mouth. “Will you fuck me?”

  A full-body shiver grips Hal, rattles his whole big frame. His hands tighten on Luke’s hips and he rakes his teeth down Luke’s chin. “If you want, baby, whatever you want. Yeah, yeah, I will, I want to.”

  Luke smiles into the next kiss. “It’s not the same as with a girl, you know.”

  Hal breathes a nervy laugh. “I may have…uh.” He breaks off when Luke nips his ear. “I may have watched some things.”

  “Oh!” Luke barks a laugh. “Look at you,” he says right in his ear. “All dirty with your research porn.”

  “I’d like to see your browser history,” Hal shoots back.

  “No, you really wouldn’t.” Luke licks one long stripe up his neck that draws an unintelligible sound from Hal. “Alright, you ready to touch and not just look?”

  Hal palms his ass and drags him close enough for Luke to feel the rigid shape of his erection. “What do you think?”

  Luke ducks out of his grip and takes off for the bedroom. “Race you!”

  The bedroom seems different now, because it isn’t Hal’s room. It’s theirs.

  He flings himself down on the bed face-first and shimmies his hips the best he can, feeling light and giddy. “Okay. Hop on.”

  Hal smacks his hip. “You’re not as cute as you think you are,” he says, but his tone says he thinks Luke is adorable.

  “Ugh. Come on. Why do I have to do all the work? You did watch the porn,” Luke teases.

  “Okay, fine.” The bed dips as Hal climbs up, and then lies down directly on top of Luke’s back, covering his hands with his own.

  “Oof, you’re heavy,” Luke complains. But it’s nice, really, Hal’s weight pressing him down into the mattress in a complete, but undemanding way like this. He thinks this must be why dogs love those Thunder Shirt things so much: the feelings of safety and closeness. He can feel the last of his nerves dissolving. When Hal starts to move, he quickly says, “No, I like it.”

  Hal breathes a chuckle against his ear. “You just like to suffer.”

  “It’s my shtick.”

  “I thought sarcasm was your shtick.”

  “That too. I’m a man of many shticks.”

  Hal wiggles a little, like he’s getting more comfortable, but it lessens the pressure on Luke’s ribcage and he knows it was a squirm for his benefit.

  “Hey,” Luke says, sobering. His voice drops by degrees, so the last word is just a whisper. “Were you serious? About…You weren’t just saying it?”

  “I would never joke about that,” Hal says, gently. “You know that.”

  “Yeah.” And he does, but there’s a part of him – that old cynic that’s lived in him since childhood – that has trouble wrapping his brain around Hal’s all-out honesty. It’s just so much.

  “So,” Hal says.

  “So?”

  “You didn’t answer.”

  “You didn’t ask. You just said you wanted to do it.”

  “Oh my – Okay.” Hal shifts off of him, stretches out on his side, and Luke rolls over so he can look at his face. His familiar, sweet, exasperated face. Hal takes a breath and grows serious…except for his eyes. Those are dancing a little, and he can’t help it. “Okay, ready this time?”

  Luke nods.

  “Lucas Phillip Keller. Will you do me the great honor of marrying me?”

  Luke fights the urge to slide off the bed, press his face into the rug, and bawl his eyes up. He’s never expected to hear these words, and they’re punching him hard in all his tender, unguarded places. His underbelly is sliced wide by the brutal honesty of Hal’s question. He means it – Hal means it. That he wants to marry him. Matching rings and picket fences and labradoodles. Adopted babies and a joint bank account.

  He takes a shaky breath and realizes he hasn’t answered, that he’s been silent too long, just staring at Hal.

  Hal’s expression crumples and becomes one of concern. “Whoa, hey.” He reaches through the space that separates them and cups Luke’s jaw in one hand. “You don’t have to answer. I’m just fucking around.”

  Luke has to force the words past his raw throat. “No, you’re not. Don’t lie about it.”

  Hal makes a desperate face. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, it’s just…” He manages to take a deeper breath and feels his lungs expand gratefully. “You’ve had time to think about this. You have been thinking about this. And it’s all sort of a surprise to me. I can’t…” He trails off, afraid his explanation is too insulting. He doesn’t want to hurt Hal, not on purpose.

  Hal’s thumb skims across his cheekbone, touches a patch of dampness at the corner of his eye. “It’s too soon, isn’t it? I’m rushing things. I’m sorry. We should try being boyfriends for a little while first.”

  Boyfriends sounds woefully inadequate. They’ve shared beds, and comics, and clothes, and secrets, and tragedies together. They’ve shared lives. Labeling themselves as “dating” seems almost like a regression, like taking away their vital connection and replacing it with something more trivial.

  Luke curls his hand around Hal’s wrist and feels the strong pulse there. “I’ve spen
t a lot of years convincing myself that it was wrong to want you like this,” he confesses, “because you being my best friend was too important to screw up with something as stupid as kissing.”

  “Kissing’s not stupid,” Hal says, immediately.

  “Still.” Luke sends him a brief smile. “I’m kinda stuck in the headspace of not allowing myself to feel this way about you.”

  “Oh, sweetheart…” Hal breathes. “I’m sorry. I–”

  “Don’t apologize. You don’t have to be sorry for the way you feel…felt…and neither do I, I don’t think. I just…”

  “Yeah.”

  “I want us to enjoy being us for a little while, if that’s okay.”

  “We’ve always been us,” Hal says. “Now we’re just even cooler.”

  That draws a real smile out of Luke. Warmth blossoms in his chest; he’s starting to expect that feeling now, as foreign as it is for him to expect good things. “I can’t argue with that.”

  “Good. ‘Cause boyfriend or not, I’ll kick your ass if you start ragging on what I’ve got with my best friend.”

  “You’re lame,” Luke says. But what he means is: Thank you for understanding that we’re both. That it’s everything. And that everything is terrifying and beautiful and I need a second to let all of that sink in.

  “Yeah, and you love me, so what does that make you?”

  Luke throws a halfhearted punch at his face and winds up getting pulled on top of Hal, straddling his stomach and looking down into his face with what he knows is the stupidest, sappiest grin on his face.

  “Hey, Hal.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Just because we aren’t going to do anything about it yet doesn’t mean you can’t still ask.”

  Hal’s brows go up. “Yeah?”

  “And it doesn’t mean I can’t go ahead and say yes.”

  Elation suffuses Hal’s cheeks with a soft pink; it sparks dazzling patterns of light in his eyes. An expression that melts all of Luke’s insides. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” And Luke leans down to kiss him.

  ~*~

  Luke is so used to expectation surpassing the drudgery of reality – he isn’t prepared for reality to be the most electric, perfect, sweet moment of his life. Sex has always been good, necessary even, but it’s never been like this, the way it is with Hal. And Luke spent so much time worrying Hal wasn’t really ready, that he didn’t know what he was getting himself into, that he has no defenses against his own overwhelming reaction.

  Hal is relentless, and patient, and focused. He is warm, and strong, and oh-so-gentle. He whispers sweet encouragements in Luke’s ear, and his hands tremble with the violence of his want.

  “I want to do everything,” he murmurs, and they do.

  Luke has waited years for this, always hoping, never thinking…and it takes his breath away: Hal, the two of them together, the rightness of it.

  After, sweaty and tangled together, Luke digs his fingertips into Hal’s back, not wanting him to pull away, or shift his weight off of him. He wants to stay like this forever. His eyes sting, and his heart threatens to beat out of his chest, and he doesn’t think he can speak, choked-up with emotion.

  Hal’s hand moves with quiet reverence down his side, tracing the rivulets of sweat on his skin. “Look at you,” he murmurs. “God.” He sounds enraptured.

  Luke closes his eyes tight against the tears when Hal presses their foreheads together.

  “Baby, look at me,” Hal whispers, breath warm against his lips.

  Luke opens his eyes, and through the tears he sees the truth in Hal’s gaze when he says, “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  And they are together.

  And they are whole.

  And this is love.

  20

  The Hopewell Art Institute occupies a converted warehouse space retrofitted with glass front walls, sleek gray hardwood floors, and chic industrial lighting that mimics the bare-bulb lamps that would have once illuminated the furniture stored here in a previous life. Tonight the lights are low, the music is soft, jazzy, and inoffensive, and though the paintings on the walls garner their share of attention, the focal point is the plethora of books, heaped artfully on a table in the center of the main room, all waiting to be signed. Luke has three new black pens in the breast pocket of his jacket, and clammy hands shoved in his pants pockets.

  It’s happening.

  Holy shit, it’s happening.

  The gallery teems with men and women in cocktail finery, nibbling expensive mini quiches and sipping champagne that a crew of tux-clad wait staff continually replenish. Servers keep stopping on their rounds to offer Luke bacon-wrapped shrimp or chocolate-dipped strawberries, and he waves them away every time, stomach rolling.

  An arm slides through his, and he recognizes Sandy’s perfume before she says, “Will you just look at this crowd? You’ve got some fans, honey.”

  “They’re not fans,” he argues. “They’re people who like to show up to events when they have nothing better to do on a Tuesday night.”

  “Oh no,” she laughs, and points to the book table where several attendees are paging through the hardbacks and talking animatedly to one another, heads bent together. “They’re here for you, Author Man.”

  “That’s what I keep telling him,” Hal says, joining them. “Maybe he’ll actually listen to you.”

  Luke glances over at him, struck all over again by the breathtaking cut of his dark blue suit and the way it brings out lighter tones in his green eyes. Hal is the only thing that’s kept him even remotely calm in the weeks leading up to the launch. Through every crisis of doubt, every midnight deadline, every near-breakdown over a glass of Scotch and his editor’s notes, Hal said, “You’re amazing, baby, you’ve got this.”

  Luke still doesn’t feel amazing, or like he’s got this, but Hal’s encouraging smile gives him life, so…here he stands, the night of his first ever book launch.

  Hal touches his arm. “There’s your mom, I’ll go get her,” he says, and strides off to do so.

  Luke spies his mother on the other side of the book table, dressed in the slim black dress he sent her last week, looking frail, beautiful, and totally out of her element.

  “That’s your mama? She’s lovely,” Sandy says, patting his hand.

  His throat is tight. “Thank you.”

  His mom glances up as Hal nears her, recognition and relief touching her face. Luke can’t hear what she says to him, but the hug the two of them share is all anyone needs to understand that they love one another, as close as a biological mother and son.

  Hal tucks her tiny hand into the crook of his elbow and steers her through the crowd. Luke sees the tears in her eyes five feet away, and Sandy lets him go so he can step forward and hug her.

  “Hi, Mom.” His voice comes out choked and small.

  “My baby’s an author,” she says, thin arms squeezing him tight. “I am so, so proud of you.”

  She pulls back, eyes shining, and he knows they both miss Sadie terribly in that moment, just as they’ve missed her in every momentous moment since they lost her.

  “Mrs. Keller?” Sandy asks, and Mom looks toward her. “Hi, I’m Sandy Maddox, it’s wonderful to meet you.” Her words, though trite, ring true and warm, because Sandy doesn’t do anything she doesn’t mean. Her smile is kind, and when she takes Mom’s hand, it’s with both of her own. “I can’t say enough good things about Luke. We just love your son. We’re not so happy, though,” she adds, side-eying Luke, “about missing the invitation.”

  Mom laughs. “I’m lucky I got an invitation, trust me.”

  “There were no invitations,” Luke says, sighing.

  “No, it was a phone call, and I raised you better than that, Lucas,” Mom says.

  Sandy laughs. “Oh, I like you. We’ll get on just fine.”

  Luke leaves his mother in Sandy’s more-than-capable hands and tugs on Hal’s sleeve. “Any chance I can get a drink for the ner
ves?”

  “One,” Hal says, and Luke sighs again. “More than that, and you’ll say something you’ll really wish didn’t get printed in the paper tomorrow.”

  “God, I hate when you’re right.”

  “No you don’t.”

  They find the table where the beverages are stationed, which looks a bit like a champagne runway. There’s a bartender, though, and Hal orders a whiskey and Coke that Luke takes gratefully and sips faster than he ought to.

  Hal urges him out of the fray and into a quiet corner, where they won’t be crashed into or recognized. “You doing okay? Aside from stage fright?”

  Luke nods, and then shakes his head. “Yes? No? I have no idea.”

  Hal chuckles. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “You would.”

  “Luke.”

  He lets out a distraught, shivery breath. “What?”

  Hal leans forward and kisses his forehead. “The book is amazing, and so are you. The book is amazing because you’re amazing. Stop worrying.”

  “You suck at pep talks,” Luke says, but leans gratefully into his chest, finding his hand with his own. He finds the warm metal of the ring on Hal’s finger, traces it with a fingertip. The engraving on the inside, worn against the skin, is the same as on Luke’s ring: My Best Friend. It’s not romantic, but neither are they, and to their ears, the title says even more than the new one they both carry: husband.

  “Hey, do you remember,” Hal says, “junior year, when we had to give those ‘persuasive speeches’?”

  “Green spaces,” Luke says with a groan, laughing. “I talked about how we needed to preserve green spaces…and used Fern Gulley as an official source.”

  Hal chuckles. “What did you make on that?”

  “A B. For first-rate bullshitting.”

  “For creativity,” Hal says. “Remember that, when you get up there: it’s a good story, and you told it creatively. People are going to love you.” He kisses Luke again, on the mouth, tipping his chin up with a fingertip. “Knock ‘em dead.”

  Luke thinks the only one likely to be dead at the end of this is him, but he loves Hal for trying to boost his confidence. “Okay,” he says on another unsteady exhale.