Homebird

by Amy Lane

  Way worse.

  As it was, he barely remembered calling Luka’s name as they were put into the ambulance and taken away.

  LUKA SAT next to his hospital bed, bandages around his arm and shoulder, eyes shadowed and haunted.

  “Luka? You’re okay.”

  “Yes. You have a concussion.”

  “Sucks. Drugs are good, though.”

  Luka swallowed. “Indeed. I am so sorry. I… I am such a fool, to put you on that thing—to think we were invincible—”

  “It was fun,” Crispin said hotly, because Luka was crying. Crying, and that couldn’t be allowed to stand. “It was fun, and except for the last part, I loved it. What happened, anyway?”

  Luka started to tell him. In French.

  Crispin listened for a moment or two, mouth open, before seizing his hand and kissing his knuckles. “Lukas,” he said, deliberately using his given name. “Lukas. Baby. Calm down. I don’t speak French. Or German. Someday you must teach me. I get you’re upset—I’m not excited to be here either. But please—please. Stay with me here. Don’t lose yourself. Baby, I’m the one with the concussion, but you’re the one who’s scaring me.”

  Luka nodded, lip trembling like a child’s. “I… I cannot….”

  Crispin kissed his knuckles again, and Luka fell forward, his self-possession gone, as he sobbed fear and worry onto Crispin’s hospital bed. Crispin stroked his hair and tried not to be deafened by the sound of the other shoe.

  HE SLEPT there, next to Crispin’s bed, until the next morning when Millie showed up to take them both home.

  “Do you remember me now?” she asked Crispin tentatively. “Because you were really out of it for a while. You bonked your conk pretty damned good, honey. You kept calling me Carmen.”

  Crispin closed his eyes and groaned, sitting on the side of the bed while they waited for the doctor. Luka was in the far corner of the room, arms crossed in front of his chest, staring at Crispin like he was afraid to close his eyes. “Oh, Millie—”

  She smiled at him, looking fragile and worried but unexpectedly strong. “Don’t be sorry. My parents were really great. And you reminded me that I’m my mother’s daughter. I mean, if you hadn’t just almost wrecked yourself, it would have been a good thing, right?”

  “You’re your mother’s daughter,” Crispin said with a tired smile. His eyes darted to Luka, who nodded, but who didn’t smile.

  Millie glanced over too, and her mouth firmed. “Luka, come here, hon. You look dreadful.”

  “White is not my color.”

  Bandages—he had a few. Crispin had sustained the concussion, but Luka had taken the brunt of the road rash.

  “No, but self-flagellation isn’t a good look for anyone. C’mon. You haven’t touched him since he got up—don’t think I didn’t notice.”

  Millie reached out to take his hand, and for a moment Crispin thought he would refuse.

  But then he learned the lesson Crispin had learned when he was five. You couldn’t deny Millie anything.

  She stalked over to Luka and grabbed his hand, then pulled him over to Crispin. “Touch him,” she commanded before giving Crispin his own hug. Crispin choked back a groan, because every muscle in his body hurt, and then she practically threw him into Luka’s arms.

  Luka caught him.

  Of course.

  His arms came tentatively around Crispin’s shoulders, and then he squeezed. “My fault,” he whispered.

  “No. I loved it until that last bit.”

  “I talked you into—”

  Crispin took a step back and shook his head. Ouch. “No. Let me own it. The guys didn’t talk me into sports—I went so I could spend time with the guys. They didn’t talk me into Vegas or San Diego or Munich—I went because it would be fun. Nobody seduced me, Luka. I went with you because I wanted to. I opened my heart to you because you needed to be there. And I got on the back of the motorcycle because….” He bit his lip. “Because, God. It made you so happy. I’d jump out of a plane to make you happy. I’d fly around the world. Anything, Lukas Josef Gabriel. Just to see you smile.”

  Luka nodded—but he didn’t look at him.

  He just pulled Crispin into a hug that felt like the embrace of a ghost.

  THEY GOT home and took some painkillers, and Millie sent them to bed with strict instructions not to leave the house because she was bringing them dinner. When Crispin woke up, Luka checked his eyes, asked him the concussion questions, and double-checked his bandages to make sure they didn’t need to be changed.

  “I’ll go start din—”

  “No,” Crispin said, pulling him back into bed. “You’ll stay here and let Millie tend to us. She’ll have us waiting on her hand and foot when the baby comes, you know that.”

  He felt it, the actual withdrawal. “Crispin, I might not—”

  “Don’t say it.” No. Not now. “Don’t think it. Wait until the bandages come off. Wait until you can go back to work. Wait until there’s some normal before you decide to throw it all away.”

  “I don’t want to throw it all away,” Luka exclaimed, struggling to sit up. “I want to save it! My God, Crispin, do you know what would happen to me if something were to happen to you? I need to know you’re safe, here in your little corner of the world. I need to know you’re—”

  Crispin kissed him. He knew all the reasons this was going to happen—but all he could think of was how to stop it.

  Don’t leave. Not when you have a choice.

  Luka responded with a little sob, and Crispin pressed his advantage, ignoring the aches and the bandages to press him back against the bed, to ravage him, all the things he had never said pushing against Luka’s tongue, his jaw, his neck.

  Stay with me. I love you so much—you’re the joy I’ve waited for my entire life. Ten years of growing brave, of remembering how faith felt, the taste of hope, and you, here, in my arms is what I was training for. Please don’t leave me, Luka—you’re all the freedom I need.

  Luka moaned, spreading his legs, and Crispin rolled into him, surprised that he fit like that, so used to being the one accommodating the other.

  But that wasn’t what Luka seemed to want, to need right now.

  Fine—if you need me to care for you, I’ll care for you. If you need me to possess you, I’ll do that.

  Crispin kept kissing, down his lean chest, down to his nipples, sparing just enough time to nip, to suck, to tantalize, to hear Luka begging for him in French, in German, in whatever language spoke most from his heart.

  “You must….” Luka flailed for words as Crispin shucked his sleep pants—Crispin’s sleep pants, that Luka had worn so often they were his in spirit. Crispin mouthed his cock, growing hard slowly through the layers of pain, painkillers, and emotional distress, and Luka started flailing with his hands—under the pillow for the lube.

  Crispin took the handoff wordlessly, using his mouth, his tongue, his other hand with all the confidence he’d learned in the last few months of being Luka’s lover.

  Of being in love.

  Luka spread his legs wide, and Crispin took the invitation, spilling too much lubricant on his fingers and thrusting one in slowly, carefully.

  If Luka had done this before, it had been a very, very long time ago.

  At least since September, but in all their time together, Luka had not spoken of any other lover by name. Crispin suspected that no matter how many weekends in Munich there had been for Luka, in his soul there was only the woman who had broken his heart and Crispin, whose heart he was about to break.

  Crispin pushed up, the abrasions on his shoulder aching, so he could see Luka, head tilted back, accepting the gentle invasion of a single finger.

  Crispin moved it slowly, watched him bite his lip to muffle the cry, and stretched a little more.

  “Luka, don’t be silent. Give me words. Give me guidance, love. I’ve never done this before.”

  “Ah! More!”

  Crispin added another finger, felt the heat
of his body, the resilient squeeze of flesh, pushing against it, listening for his gasps, his pleas, his need.

  Crispin’s cock ached inside his pajamas. He dripped, aroused in spite of the direness of the moment, maybe even because of it. He engulfed Luka with his mouth, penetrated him, dreamed of being sheathed inside him, while Luka cried his name.

  “Crispin!” Luka spurted a bit of pre in Crispin’s mouth, and it was time.

  His body ached as he shoved his sleep pants down so he could push up along the bed—but this, he knew, was an ache. He needed Luka next to him. Needed Luka in his life. Anything else was pain, of the sort he wasn’t sure he could survive again.

  “Crispin, please….”

  As Crispin wedged himself between Luka’s thighs, positioning himself to thrust inside, he saw that Luka’s eyes were more than shiny—they were overflowing.

  He kissed them first, kissed his cheeks, kissed the corners of his mouth. Luka gasped and Crispin plundered, pushing his hips inexorably forward, invading Luka’s body with his own, taking him over, mouth, ass, body, and soul.

  Luka’s cry of pleasure had a wretched, unhinged edge, and Crispin pulled back, ready to stop.

  “No, love,” Luka begged. “Keep going. Let me feel something good.”

  Crispin surged forward, grunting a little as Luka’s body squeezed him, a wet satin vise. “Ah! So tight!” he whispered, not sure how he could hold himself up, sustain his rhythm, except he needed that in, that out, Luka’s groans against his lips, all of it, to chase that dream of orgasm that was cresting in his body whether he willed it or no.

  “How’s this feel?” he asked, needing Luka to say it, needing it to be good.

  “Wonderful,” Luka breathed, his voice breaking in different places this time.

  “Good. And this?” Crispin thrust forward particularly hard, just to hear Luka cry out.

  “Gut! Ja!”

  “Want me to keep going?” Crispin taunted, and stopping in that moment wasn’t easy, not easy in the least.

  “I’ll die if you stop,” Luka begged, and Crispin had no choice.

  Not that he wanted to stop either.

  “God, this is awesome,” he confessed, surging and receding, becoming the moon that drove Luka’s tide. “You feel so good.” His arms shook, and his thighs and glutes were pretty tired too, and he wasn’t sure if that was the accident or if he just worked a whole different set of sex muscles when he bottomed, but he knew he didn’t have long.

  “I want!” Luka pushed back against Crispin’s thrust, and Crispin made the next one harder. “Yes! That!”

  Crispin pushed up on his knees, putting Luka’s thighs up on his shoulders, and looked down as his lover lay spread for him on the bed, hair in disarray, ass spread wantonly.

  Heady, this sense of power. That he was the one taking care of Luka and not the other way around. Then Luka turned his head to the side and bit his lip, and Crispin had a revelation.

  This was how it had always been.

  He couldn’t stop now. “Grab yourself,” he commanded. “Stroke. Squeeze. I need to see you come, baby. Please.”

  He restarted the rhythm, snapping his hips forward, waiting for Luka’s noise to build in time with the stroking of his cock.

  Too soon—ah, God, too soon. Luka’s hand slowed down, and he squeezed, just under the head, his entire body shaking as his cock erupted, short bursts of semen shooting across his chest.

  The sight, lewd, beautiful, uninhibited…

  His, drove Crispin into a frenzy, and he fucked harder, faster, rawer until the tingle took him over, toes to nose. His body froze, convulsed, became helpless in the wake of orgasm, which knocked him flat into the bed, as broken as they come.

  He fell on top of Luka, not moving, head aching, exhausted and desperate, needing to hear the words.

  “I love you, Lukas.”

  “I love you too,” Luka panted.

  “Don’t leave me.”

  “I will always love you,” Luka whispered. “Always and forever. There will be no other for me.”

  “Augh!” Crispin rolled to the side, too tired to move, even to dress himself. Luka rolled into his arms and they clung, sweat drying in the winter afternoon. The long shadows pushed their way through the window, the one that overlooked the fruitless mulberry tree, bare now but soon to be clothed in the most extravagant foliage.

  “The birds will come back in the spring,” Crispin said, knowing this was important, not sure if Luka heard. “Every spring. Even though they’re birds, this is their home.”

  Luka didn’t answer, just held Crispin as close as he could, their breath and their sweat and their semen mingling, and maybe, Crispin hoped, just maybe, the blood of their hearts as well.

  HE WOKE up in the early evening when Millie came through the door, asking cheerfully if everyone was decent.

  Crispin’s pants had been pulled back up around his waist and his shirt pulled down decently over his waistband.

  He lay curled up in his bed, Captain Steve on the pillow next to him.

  Luka was gone, his backpack too.

  He’d taken all three paperbacks.

  And the pajamas he’d been wearing since his arrival.

  And not another blessed thing.

  Faith

  MILLIE CALLED Link, and they met him at the Cave Bar. Crispin was still in his pajamas but didn’t care.

  “I can’t drink,” he said as she pushed him across the bar floor in his slippers.

  They made room for him soberly, a spot between Cam and Nick. Millie kissed his cheek.

  “They’ll take you home,” she murmured. “Don’t give up hope. He was afraid, that’s all.”

  “I thought we were going to the airport,” he said plaintively. That had been his plan, at least.

  “Crispin, it’s raining like balls outside,” she said, which was only the truth. “And you look like hell. You’re stoned on painkillers and your heart is broken and even if you got to the airport, you’d do what? Run around in your pajamas asking, ‘Has anyone seen my runaway boyfriend?’ Do you even know where he’s going?”

  Crispin opened his mouth to say “India!” and then realized it could also be Japan. It could also be Munich, or Fiji. Or New Zealand.

  Or any one of the connecting flights to a bigger airport that would take him one of these places.

  He shook his head meekly. “No.”

  She lowered her forehead to his. “I’m going to hope he comes to his senses,” she said. “It’s damned hard to get a flight the hell out of here. Maybe when he gets put on three days’ standby, he’ll be forced to ask himself if this is really what he wants to do. In the meantime, I got you your friends. I’m going to go home and cry all over my husband.” She gave a lopsided smile. “Because he’s broken too, but he decided to stay.”

  She kissed Crispin’s cheek and turned around to leave, the guys calling after her as she waved.

  “So,” Link said heavily into the silence. “You look like shit.”

  Crispin half laughed. “You know, I don’t even know what the accident looked like?”

  Cam groaned. “It was horrific—you should have seen it. A truck came up behind you and, like, deliberately tried to edge you guys out of the lane. Ass. Hole. Anyway, Luka could have just ended you both then, because oncoming traffic was right there. But he got really creative instead, held on until the first car passed, and then whipped it around into a controlled slide into the parking lot before the next car got to you. I mean, it may have felt like ass when you woke up, but if he hadn’t been driving that thing, you never would have woken up.”

  “Oh my God,” Nick said, nodding his head in agreement. “I mean, after watching that, I’ll never ride the thing again. But he saved your life—no doubt. And he was almost hysterical about you until the ambulance came.” Nick shuddered. “Crispin, I… I gotta admit. It was pretty damned real there. I… I might have left someone too, if they scared me that bad.”

  Crispin nodded, his
throat tight, and he fought the temptation to check his phone for the three-thousandth time. “He… he needs space,” he said, hoping that was true. “Just… just hurts.”

  “Yeah,” Ray said, taking a sip of beer. “I… I hear you.” He closed his eyes, and Crispin didn’t even have to ask. Cathy had miscarried again, and their hearts were shattering into a million pieces. But Ray opened his eyes and smiled gamely. “You keep trying,” he said with a shrug. “You find another way, another hope. You don’t give up, right?”

  Not on Luka. Not yet. “No,” Crispin said. “You don’t.”

  Still, it was good—bitter but good—to sit with his friends and commiserate with their sadness when he was sad. This was when they talked about Nick’s breakup, and Link’s mother-in-law who had just passed, and Ray’s painful, patient support of his wife.

  This was when Cam said, “Uh, guys? Don’t get too excited about those wedding invitations. I… I don’t think Darla and I are going to make it.”

  “Aw, man! What happened?” Nick asked. “I had hopes that one of us was going to be okay.”

  Cam looked at Crispin, and then at Jamie, who had been hanging at their shoulders, joining in the pity party when he could. He’d already told Crispin quietly that Luka was out for a week anyway because of the accident, and he’d hold his job for a while after that, but right now, his eyes were all on Cam.

  “Let’s just say that Luka was hysterical when Crispin was hurt, and I saw… saw how scary it is to care about someone when it really matters. And as awesome as Darla was, I… I wasn’t ever scared like that. I think… I think I need to love someone so much it scares me—then I’ll know it’s real.”

  “That was a terrible idea!” Crispin burst out, trying not to yawn. “I’m a horrible example! Are you not seeing me right now?”

  He knew what he looked like! Shadows under his eyes, head aching like it was going to pop off his shoulders, in his pajamas, bruises and road rash all over his body. He was—