by Amy Lane
In spite of the cold, the flush in his face, in his chest, in his groin, didn’t fade.
Risk Assessment
“WHAT is that, a dream catcher?”
Mal looked over his woven mat of twigs on his lap and tried to keep a straight face. Tevyn had come up with the idea of weaving snowshoes, and it had been a good one. But Tevyn was like the dog Mal’s mom had loved before she died—in constant motion, twitching even in sleep. It was probably what made him such an outstanding athlete, having all of that kinetic energy bottled up in a disciplined body.
It did not, however, make for a lot of patience when dealing with fiddly things like sap-soaked twigs.
Mal, who dealt with facts and figures and spreadsheets and the infinitesimal difference between decimal points, was apparently a natural at it.
He remembered his mom’s knitting and yarn craft supplies, stacked in the guest room of her house after he’d moved in after her death, and thought he might want to do something with those.
“This is fun,” he said calmly, selecting another slender twig. “My mom used to knit and crochet. I should take it up.” He sat cross-legged, a spare sweatshirt on his lap to keep him warm while his pants dried, and something about doing arts and crafts by the fire seemed cozy and domestic in spite of the reality battering at their shelter outside.
“Missy loves it,” Tevyn said, his voice only shaking a little. “When I was a kid, she used to drag me to this… this yarn festival in Loveland. The yarn was pretty—a thousand different colors—and there were people who made stuffed toys, which I was all for. But they were just sitting, with their hands moving. Maybe I was too young. Couldn’t sit.”
“Maybe she could teach you now,” Mallory said carefully. They didn’t know. Missy could have a month. Or she could have already passed. “Or maybe, we could… I don’t know. Learn together.”
Tevyn gazed at him, lips parted in what was apparently wonder. “Knitting?”
Mal’s cheeks heated. “We do a lot of traveling,” he said with a shrug. “To cold places. I mean, if I had my mom’s knit bag, I’d be making us full-body sweaters right now.”
“What… what was she like?” Tevyn asked.
Well, of course. Mallory had needed to get personal with Tevyn and Missy. He’d needed to know their finances, and there were few things as personal as that. But Mal—he’d needed to be dependable. You didn’t get to talk about your mother when you were dependable.
But neither of them had anywhere to go, and talking about his mother, whom he had loved, was so much better than telling Tevyn he was scared.
“She was amazing,” Mallory said softly. “She started dyeing her hair as soon as she went gray. Not brown or blonde, but pink and purple, long before it was fashionable. She would do regular mom stuff—bring home sugar cookies in the tube after work and then cook them and let me decorate. Cook spaghetti for my birthday. But we didn’t have a lot of money. My dad died when I was little, and she was single and working. And she’d find… just things to do. There was always a park to walk to or a sunset to see. She would make up these really… enchanting games, and sing songs. I… love musical theater. Not because I love it but because she used to sing all the words to A Chorus Line and we’d act it out in the living room. When I started my business, the first thing I did was get season tickets at the Orpheum and took her to every show.”
Tevyn had stopped working on his snowshoe and was looking at Mallory with ginormous, luminous eyes. “Did she like that?” he asked.
“Oh yeah. She—even after she got sick. She would put on a wig and her best dress, and we would go see Wicked or Newsies. I think she was trying to hold on for Hamilton, but….” He couldn’t finish that sentence. “She just really loved it. I’m… I don’t seem to have that sort of poetry, you know? I… I guess we were always so hurting for money. I wanted to make sure people who needed it could find a way to do the things they wanted. It’s what I wanted for her.”
Tevyn swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “She sounds… wonderful. When did she pass?”
“About a year before you walked into my office.” Mal shrugged. “We’d only recently located there, you know. Had been on the ground floor out in Burlingame—took us four years to make enough money to have an office up in the sky.”
“Did she get to see that?”
“No. But she wouldn’t have cared. The fact that I’m single—that she would have cared about.”
Tevyn let out a half laugh. “Did she care about you… you know…?”
“Being gay? No. I mean, she’d been an actress in college. I think half her friends were gay.”
Tevyn shrugged. “I… I guess I was just crazy about sex. Boys, girls—it was like there was always a new trick to learn, you know?”
Mal snorted softly. “No. I mean….” He bit his lip, thinking about that kiss. That amazing, sensitizing kiss that had revved his battery, kept him warm during his interminable trek for firewood. “I’ve always sort of suspected it would be a lot of fun, but you know….”
Tevyn was staring at him.
“What?”
“You’ve had relationships!”
“Yes! Five!” Mal swallowed and wondered, if they were going to die up here in this arctic wasteland, why he couldn’t have gone before he’d said that, and after that epic kiss. “Uhm, several,” he amended.
Tevyn was regarding him with the openmouthed fascination of a cat who could taste prey on its palate.
“Five, you say?”
“It’s not, a… you know, plethora.”
Tevyn smirked. “A plethora. No. No, it is not. So tell me about this five. I’m dying to hear.”
“I’ll tell you my middle name instead!”
Tevyn shook his head. “Oh, no. I’ll guess your middle name, Mallory Andrew Armstrong—”
“Nope.”
“Either way, I’ll guess it. But this, you have to tell me.”
“Why?” The snowshoe in Mal’s hand was almost forgotten, until Mal realized if he wove it a little tighter, he wouldn’t have to see Tevyn’s predatory gleam. “Why is it so necessary? You notice I don’t ask you names—”
“Because that would cover the athletic roster of the entire circuit,” Tevyn said dismissively, “including girlfriends, boyfriends, trainers, and a couple of physical therapists younger and hotter than Harold. If you’re fooling around with everybody, you’re not serious about anybody. Not one of those people lasted more than two nights, tops. But you—you’ve been auditioning for happy ever after, and I’d like to know the competition.”
“One of them’s a girl,” Mal said, arching an eyebrow playfully, like maybe that would stop this madness. “You really want to hear?”
“God, it’s like somebody wrote a soap opera just for me! Now shoot!”
Augh!
“So, Chris—”
“The girl?”
“No, my high school boyfriend. Closet case. Said he loved me, hearts, flowers, the works, then told his family Mallory was a girl’s name.”
“Asshole,” Tevyn snapped.
“Deeply afraid,” Mal corrected with compassion. “He’s come out since. Wasn’t pretty. You and I got lucky. I try not to forget that.”
“You’re a really good person. Now spill. First base, second base, third base, twins and a trapeze in the homestretch?”
“Some necking,” Mal told him, smiling in spite of himself. Tevyn’s practicality made the pain of adolescence seem exactly that—adolescent. Almost nostalgic. Like Tevyn could laugh at those things in himself too. “Once, there was a mutual hand job that has gone down in my hall of fame.”
Tevyn grunted. “So not the one that got away.”
“No.”
“Go on.”
Mal had to laugh. “Courtney.”
“The girl?”
“Nope. College boyfriend. Was headed somewhere back East after college. We had an amicable split.”
“Did you have amicable sex, Mal? Because even if t
his guy took your cherry, I’m not feeling it.”
“I took his,” Mal told him, face burning. “It was pleasant on both sides.”
Tevyn’s sputtering laugh told him everything he wanted to know about “pleasant” sex, and it wasn’t flattering.
“So two swings and two whiffs. Did you try the girl for shits and giggles, you know, to see if you got it wrong the first time?”
“My middle name could be Hungarian, you know. My mother’s family was Hungarian. Maybe it’s Slyzyk.”
“I don’t even know what that was you just said, but I know that’s not your name. I got close, didn’t I? That’s why you switched subjects. Did I guess right about the girl?”
The hell of it was, he had.
“Her name was—”
“Lucinda?” Tevyn hazarded, and Mal grinned with all his teeth.
“Charlie.”
“No!”
“I shit you not.”
“Your business partner?”
God. So embarrassing. “The very same.”
“But she doesn’t even like me!” Tevyn’s horror was comical.
Mal grimaced. “That’s not true. She just… you know.”
“No, I don’t.” Tevyn was looking at him like this was serious, and Mal blew out a breath, remembering all the times Charlie had greeted Tevyn with short words and narrowed eyes.
“She’s not stupid, Tevyn. She knew I was… not rational about you. She worries. She was there when I lost my mother, and there when I broke up with Keith. She uh, doesn’t trust someone who might hurt me.”
“Well, tell her I won’t. I want to like her. But you slept together? Because that changes everything!”
“You should still try to like her,” Mal said, hoping he hadn’t ruined everything with this little secret. “Because it was a terrible mistake. It’s just….” How to explain this? “You know—we had so much fun setting the business up, and we got along so well, and it seemed like it would be so….” Oh, this didn’t reflect well on him.
“Easy?”
Mal sighed. “Yeah. But I was watching extreme amounts of porn to make her not feel bad whenever we had a date. About four weeks in, we met at a restaurant, and she ordered a bottle of wine for each of us and said, ‘We’re toasting our friendship, Mal. And our business. Because that other thing is so not us.’”
Tevyn let out a sigh. “Man, I can’t even make fun of that. That’s… so grown-up.”
“Yeah. Yeah, it was. So my next relationship was not.”
“Really?”
Mal’s cheeks burned. “A porn model named Skylar. Great kid. Came down to a dance club, right after me and Charlie called it quits. I was pounding vodka. I woke up naked, and he said I’d hit high C.”
Tevyn did one of those things where you’re trying not to laugh so you choke on your tongue. “Did you?”
Mal hid his face behind the screen of branches he was weaving. “I have no idea. I’ve never been so drunk in my life.”
“So did you date?”
“God no. I kissed his cheek, took two ibuprofen, and fixed him breakfast, and he kissed my cheek and told me he had to be in Sacramento for class the next day.”
“And you called that a relationship?”
Mal’s mortification was complete. “It was supposedly the best sex I’ve ever had. I figured he should get mention.”
“Kaden,” Tevyn ventured.
“No.”
“Richard.”
“No.”
“Dallas, Texas, Austin, Dalton, Tyler, Taylor, or Madison.”
“No.”
Tevyn’s voice dropped, all teasing gone now. “Then tell me about Keith.”
Mal sucked in a breath. “Keith was… well, he was supposed to be it. The real thing. Not an audition. He was a probate lawyer. We’d used his firm in the past. He was steady and kind. Had a cat, a dog, a small house on the peninsula. Rode BART in on the commute. Liked the theater. We’d go up to the foothills or to the beach on our weekends off and go hiking or see a show. Like you see people do in movies or hear about on TV. We made plans for the future and everything. I thought, you know, by the end of the year, we’d move in together.”
“What happened?” Tevyn asked, but he was looking at Mal like he knew.
“The Olympics,” Mallory told him. “And suddenly that time we’d spend antiquing or walking on the beach, I was spending in a helicopter, on my way to God knows where, watching you fly down a hill.”
Tevyn swallowed, and his eyes grew bright. “Do you want me to say I’m sorry, Mallory Seymour Armstrong?”
“No—and no.” Mal looked away. “I want you to know… this thing you’re doing, where you’re telling me we need to bare our souls to each other, and you’re asking me about my past lovers, and you’re looking at me like… like lunch—”
“Way, way better than lunch. Dinner at least,” Tevyn said soberly—which, considering how hungry they were, was a serious thing.
“Like Wagyu Kobe beef and lobster,” Mal amended breathlessly. “This is important to me. This… I will do anything you want, Tevyn. I will stay away and let you live your life. I will… will move to Colorado, business and all. I will give up all my clients and follow you from place to place like a bird on the wing. But you need to know I gave up… a relationship, a good one, just to see you fly down a snowy hill and do impossible things in the air.”
Tevyn set his mangled mess of weaving down by the fire and moved to hands and knees, until he was right in front of Mallory.
Very carefully he pushed on Mallory’s wrist until Mal set his own weaving aside, and the only thing in their little cave, with the cheery fire beside them and the howling wind outside, was Tevyn’s sober blue eyes.
“You lied,” Tevyn whispered.
“I did not. My middle name’s not Seymour.”
Tevyn shook his head slowly. “You lied about not having poetry. All those people I’m not naming? Not a soul has said anything to me as important as that.”
Mal closed his eyes, expecting the kiss, and he was not disappointed.
Tevyn’s mouth was soft, warm, and proprietary, and Mal’s heart started hammering in his ears louder than the storm. Tevyn didn’t move from his hands and knees, and Mal would have to disentangle his legs to do more, but the kiss simply blazed up between them, hot, hotter, explosive, with nowhere else to go and no more tinder to burn. It blew up—lips, tongues, teeth, no exploring, simple sensual annihilation.
Mal groaned, lifting his hands to Tevyn’s cheeks to hold him in place, to plunder more, and Tevyn pushed forward instead until Mal was on his back, Tevyn on top of him, his bare legs wrapped around Tev’s hips as they necked breathlessly on the ground.
The fire popped next to them, and Tevyn startled, scooting off and looking around wildly.
Mal couldn’t even laugh. “Fire,” he muttered.
“Dammit.” Tevyn rocked back onto his knees. “Dammit, we’re not doing this here.”
“Thank God,” Damien mumbled. “’Cause that would have been awkward.”
Mal threw his arm over his eyes in mortification. “Don’t suppose we can all pretend Damien was too stoned to see that?”
“Since I thought he was asleep, that’s an awesome idea,” Tevyn muttered sourly.
“Maybe I could just die and save you the embarrassment.” He didn’t sound like he was joking. Why wasn’t he joking?
Tevyn and Mal shared a look of panic and then looked back to Damien, who had been sleeping peacefully.
His face was paler than it had been after the bandage change, and his cheeks were flushed when the little shelter was still chilly, but not deadly cold.
“Need another ibuprofen?” Tevyn asked, voice clinical, as though they hadn’t been busted necking on the ground like schoolkids.
“Would be grateful. Have we had our protein bar yet? My stomach’s not happy with all the meds.”
“Not yet,” Tevyn said. “Mal, you keep weaving like the expert you are. I’ll do eve
rything else.”
“Bossy,” Damien muttered. “He’s bossy.”
“Incredibly,” Mallory agreed, focusing on his tightly bound mat of branches. “So, uh, how much did you—”
“I faded out when he asked about your sexual history, which means you have got to step up your game.”
Mal let out an embarrassed chuckle. “I’ll let you know if that changes.”
“You will not,” Tevyn snapped. “That’s gonna be between you and me. He doesn’t need to know a damned thing.”
Mal stared at him as he busied himself around the shelter, the line drawn between his blond eyebrows stating he clearly meant business.
“Uh….”
Tevyn’s look at him was… lazy. Lazy and leonine. “You won’t need to tell everyone, Mal. They’ll know.”
“Uh….”
“Yeah,” Damien added, taking the ibuprofen tablets from Tevyn gratefully. “But will they know Mal’s middle name? Is that game still going on, or did Tev figure it out when I dozed off?”
“Nope,” Mal said, letting a small smile of triumph twist his mouth as he worked.
“George,” Damien hazarded.
“Nope.”
“Grover,” Tevyn tried.
“Nope.”
“Kendall,” Tevyn tried again.
“Nope—but that’s a nice name!”
“It is,” he agreed. “You seem to go for unisex, and I thought it would fit.”
“In my exes, not myself!”
“Fair enough—Mallory.” Damien took the flask of melted water from Tevyn and swallowed. “Percival.”
“Nope.”
“Gerald,” Tevyn tried.
“Nope.”
“Carlton.”
Nope, nope, nope—but at this point, Mallory wasn’t sure if he’d answer yes if they stumbled upon the right name by accident.
The game was keeping them occupied and happy and not freaking out about the storm, and it was letting him weave his tight little mats that would hopefully be enough to walk on top of the snow.
And it was letting Mal not dwell on the things he and Tevyn had said with only the fire and the snow as witness, things he was almost afraid to admit he’d said.
