by Riley Knight
Tom took a second and just looked at Isaac, and it was like, piece by piece, layer by layer, like an onion, he was peeled off and exposed to the other man. Those eyes were pitiless but compassionate, and they had seen so much more than Isaac ever had, he could somehow tell that without needing to be told with words.
It was terrifying, being this exposed, but it didn’t seem like Tom had anything but good intentions, so Isaac sat there with his hands resting on the bar, looking back at Tom and letting the older man see whatever it was he was looking for.
“I think you know.” Tom’s voice was gentle, despite his all-seeing eyes. “So talk. About anything and everything. Talk about what’s been bugging you, and if it might just have something to do with the reason that Ben has been walking around like someone shoved a cactus up his ass for the last few weeks.”
Almost against his will, that mental image brought a snort of amusement from Isaac’s lips. He glanced down at his hands, at the way his fingertips restlessly traced circles over the worn, but clean, bar, and when he glanced back up again Tom had mercifully looked away and was busy counting the till, tallying up the profits of the night.
“Ben lied to me,” Isaac said, and the weird thing was that he didn’t even really mean to say the words. He just looked up at Tom’s face, which wasn’t even tilted toward his own anymore. Tom was glancing down, counting bills and silver coins and not even looking at Isaac.
“Yes, I picked that up,” Tom’s voice was wry as he counted quarters, shimmering in the low light as they fell, plunking one by one on top of each other. It was a safer thing to watch, Isaac felt, than Tom’s face, even averted as it was.
“He wouldn’t tell me why. I mean, I got the equivalent of a shrug and an I dunno when I asked him,” Isaac told him, and as he said the words, it all flooded back, all of the feelings that he’d had back then which had sort of faded into the background of his mind.
He hadn’t really dealt with any of them, and they were all willing to rush back, and once more he felt everything that he had felt that night when he had learned about all of this.
“Ben doesn’t talk about things,” Tom commented, as he switched from the quarters to the dimes, which made a higher pitched noise than the quarters had, a sort of ringing, as they fell in a shimmering stream from his fingers. “He plays his cards pretty close, especially when he’s feeling something.”
Isaac frowned a little bit. That was something that he hadn’t considered before, but Tom’s words rang true for him. He nodded slowly and then closed his eyes and rested his elbows on the bar, his head propped up in his hands, as he half watched Tom count the money.
“Especially when he’s feeling something?” Isaac asked, and Tom actually flashed his eyes away from the dimes to glance at Isaac, and there may have been the faintest trace of pity in them.
“Yeah,” Tom murmured, his eyes fixing meaningfully on Isaac before he turned back to what he was doing. “The more he feels, the more he shuts down. He is always protecting himself. Don’t you see that? Can you see past the mask at all?”
Isaac frowned, startled by that comment. Many times, he’d thought of Ben as wearing a protective mask, but it surprised him that Tom used the same metaphor. Shaking his head, Isaac pushed himself up off of the bar stool.
“I have to go,” he wouldn’t meet Tom’s eyes, looking at him only through the corners of his own, but he saw Tom nod at him as he jotted some numbers down on a piece of paper and then turned his full attention back to Isaac.
“Okay. But think about it, Isaac. I know you’re pissed, and I would be, too. But are you going to let that ruin this for yourself?” Isaac let his eyes slide over to Tom, just a little, to see the other man smiling encouragingly at him. “So be pissed, if you’re pissed, but I think you’re in love with him and I know that he’s in love with you. Don’t lose that unless you’re very sure that you’re ready for it. That it’s what you really want.”
Isaac nodded tightly and then turned and walked out of the bar, his hands clenched into fists of tension at his sides. Tom didn’t know what he was talking about, Isaac was convinced of that. Ben wasn’t in love with Isaac …
… Though he had been right about Isaac being in love with Ben. Even now, that love burned in his heart, and it was a truer, brighter burn even than the rage which he had allowed to reign over him. It was still there, as hot as ever, and nothing seemed like it would diminish that.
So if Tom was right about that, if he could see that with his eyes which seemed to be able to pierce through anything and see everything, wasn’t it possible that he was right about Ben, too?
He lost himself in the motion of walking to the place which he now, he had to admit if only to himself, considered to be his home. The movement of his legs, of his weight shifting from one foot to another as he walked down the endless gray river of the sidewalk. The way his arms swung naturally at his side, and the way that he didn’t realize that he was running until he felt the burn in his lungs and saw the buildings beside him start to blur by.
By the time he got to the apartment building, he was sprinting. Ben would be asleep, probably, so there was no reason to run like this, no reason to rush. The realization slowed him, then stopped him, and he stared at the apartment building as though it had come from another planet.
The sign out front was gone.
There had been a sign, announcing the fact that Ben’s old apartment was available to rent. Isaac had taken for granted that it would just be there until he needed it to be, but it was gone. Instead, there was another sign, one which announced in no uncertain terms, in bold lettering as clear as anything, that there was No Vacancy in this building.
No Vacancy. Someone else had rented that apartment, and Isaac was pretty sure that this was the only apartment building in town. For a moment, he just stared at it, terror creeping through him, but wasn’t there also just the faintest hint of relief?
Yes, there definitely was, and when he realized that, he knew what he needed to do if he hadn’t pushed Ben away entirely, as he had really been trying to do. If Ben would even be willing to listen to anything that Isaac said, after everything that had gone between them.
Slowly, feeling about a thousand years old, covered in sweat from his late night sprinting session, Isaac made his way into the building. Tom speaking to him as he had seemed like a sign. Seeing, well, the lack of the sign in the front yard, it also seemed like a sign, oddly enough.
He had to try. That’s what it came down to. Because Tom was right. Isaac did love Ben, and if there was any chance, any chance at all, that this could work out, Isaac knew that he would have to take it.
Silently, he slipped into the house, knowing exactly where to avoid stepping, where the creaking boards might wake Sammy, who still wasn’t fully used to this place, up if he trod on them. He kicked off his shoes at the door, and it was only when he walked right past the couch where he’d been sleeping that he realized what his plan was, if any word as grand and organized as plan could be used to describe the mental state he had going on right now.
It was more like Ben’s room, and Ben himself, were some sort of magnet that was drawing him, and he walked toward him because he had no power to resist a call like that and didn’t even want to. Yes, he was still hurt, and yes, he was still angry, but he could see past that for the first time, see what he was potentially giving up.
Quietly, he drew the door shut behind him, and looked at Ben, his eyes piercing the dim light to see the man, apparently fast asleep, his head on the pillow and slightly tilted toward Isaac so that he could see the handsome features, more relaxed than they usually were.
In complete silence, Isaac drew off his clothes, and knowing full well that he was standing a very real chance of being rejected, he went to the bed and slipped, completely naked, between the sheets, where the heat of Ben’s body had already warmed up the air beneath.
His body seemed to fit perfectly against Ben’s as he cradled him from behind, and he wrappe
d his arm around Ben’s waist, holding him against himself and feeling like something that he hadn’t even fully noticed was missing from deep inside himself was back.
Feeling complete in a way that he never had before.
Isaac laid his head on Ben’s shoulder, his cheek against his smooth, strong upper back, skin to skin, and tension that he hadn’t even been aware that he was holding fled from his body, leaving just him and Ben, this man that, despite everything, he loved with everything in him.
Maybe it was too soon for that sort of love, but Isaac loved him that way all the same.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Sleep had abandoned him, for the most part. Ben got enough, just barely, to function, but his eyes always felt like they had had sand dumped in them, and he felt like he was always skirting the ragged edge of exhaustion.
Funny thing was, he had slept just fine with Isaac in his bed. But the sheets didn’t even smell like Isaac anymore like the younger man had never been there at all. Now, all of a sudden, Ben couldn’t sleep and hadn’t really been able to since the last night, when Isaac had walked away from him.
It was like sharing a house with a ghost. He and Isaac hadn’t said more than a few words to each other, and when Ben glanced into Isaac’s eyes, when he stole a glimpse as furtively as a thief in the night, he saw anger burning there which told him to back off, to keep a distance.
This night was no different than any other. Ben was in bed, with Sammy safely tucked away, and he was waiting with his eyes closed, not in sleep but so that he could better focus on the noises. Every night that Isaac worked, Ben waited up until his former lover came home, and only then did he have a chance at sleeping for a couple of hours.
The door would shut first, a sign that Isaac was home, that he had made it back safely from work. His footsteps, soft and careful, would pad across the floor, and then there would be the slight sigh of the couch as Isaac sank down onto it. It was the same every night since Isaac had walked out on Ben, or every night that Isaac worked, anyway.
Not tonight, though.
It was the same at first, but then Isaac walked past the couch, Ben knew that Isaac had walked too far. Where was he going? Ben tried to sharpen his ears, to do his best to hear everything going on in the other room while telling himself that having any hope was stupid and that there was no way this was going to be anything good.
Every night, Ben had left his door open, just a little. In case Sammy needed anything, he’d always told himself, but really, it was a silent invitation. If Isaac came back to him, then he was welcome.
There was the faintest hint of the door as it moved through space, a whisper of noise that Ben wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t screwed himself up to the place where he noticed everything. He lay as still as he could, and he actually sensed when Isaac came into the room, even though there was nothing really to hear.
And then there was the whisper of something, cloth, maybe, the sound of the door latching shut, all soft noises which probably wouldn’t have been able to wake anyone, if they’d been asleep. The bed gave way under Isaac’s weight and then his slightly chilly body was resting against Ben’s from behind, skin against skin, mostly, since all that Ben wore to sleep in was his boxers.
Isaac was in his bed. Isaac was pressed against him, his slender body familiar and vivid and so very there. Isaac, by some miracle, had his hand lightly resting on Ben’s stomach, not just in bed with him but actually holding him, and Ben squeezed his eyes more tightly shut and wondered if he should actually do something as trite, as clichéd, as pinching himself.
The thing was, he’d had dreams like this before. He had been so sure that he had Isaac in bed with him again and then woken up to find himself alone. But those dreams had never truly felt real, and this did.
He could feel everything. Isaac’s breath on the back of his neck, the slight scrape of his stubble over Ben’s back as he rested against him. The slight chill of his skin from the night air, which gave way almost immediately as it warmed to the heat of the blankets and Ben’s skin.
“Isaac,” Ben whispered, and he wasn’t even sure that he was going to speak until he heard the one word, so plaintive, come from his own lips. He hadn’t truly meant to say it, and he winced when he heard it because it showed too much. But he couldn’t, for once, seem to help it.
“Hello, Ben,” Isaac whispered, and his breath puffed over the sensitive skin of Ben’s neck, his hand warming quickly against Ben’s stomach until it seemed almost to burn right into him.
Ben felt his body seize up, felt it all clench tightly, because he had literally no idea what was going on. No idea what to expect, only that he’d been waiting for Isaac to be ready to talk to him again. And now, here he was, and there was, for the first time, no hidden undertone of anger even in the few words that he’d spoken.
Then Ben was moving, and it was once more without any decision being made on his part. Or any conscious one, anyway. His body turned over, and he flipped so that he was facing Isaac, looking into those heavenly blue eyes of his, so sure that he was going to see something there that he didn’t want to but he made himself look, and he was glad of it.
There wasn’t anger. Confusion, yes, and exhaustion, and something else. All of a sudden, Ben remembered Isaac saying those three words to him, the three words that Ben hadn’t, that he couldn’t make himself, return. They had scared him back then, and they still scared him a little bit as he looked at Isaac, as he read the truth there.
But it was more of a relief than it was scary. Isaac had meant the words, and even though he’d gotten angry, he still had that truth written in his eyes. Ben had thought that Isaac might just be overemotional, mistaking a sexual connection for real love, but he had badly underestimated this man.
Isaac and Ben had one thing in common. They didn’t give their love easily, and when they did give it, it was forever. Or, at least, Ben had to hope that was the case or else he was going to get his heart torn out of his chest and stomped on because he was letting himself feel things he had sworn that he would never feel.
“Isaac,” Ben whispered, his body fitting with Isaac’s perfectly, their legs instinctively tangling together so that they were anchored firmly, like they belonged that way. “Isaac, you came back.”
Isaac nodded, and Ben took a deep breath. He had driven Isaac away once before. What was to keep that from happening again? As freaked out as he was by it, he was going to have to say these words, words he had been so sure he would never say.
“I love you.”
It came out easier than he would have thought, one word naturally following the other, and it was like a weight had been lifted right off of him. No, not off of him, not off of his shoulders, but from deep inside of him, right in the very center of his being.
A slight smile came onto Isaac’s face, more in the corners of his eyes than his lips, but it was there. Well, that had gone better than expected. He had half thought that Isaac would tell him it was too late for that, but once more, his faith, his trust, in Isaac was rewarded.
“I didn’t tell you about the job because I didn’t want you to leave,” Ben finally spoke the words which he hadn’t been able to say all of those weeks ago when he’d lost Isaac, he’d thought for good. Now that he had this unexpected second chance, he wasn’t going to miss out on it. Not if he could help it, because however freaky it was for him to bare his soul like this, it was much, much more terrifying to consider losing Isaac entirely.
“What do you mean?” Isaac asked, their bodies pressed together, tangled together, right up to halfway up their chests. They looked into each other’s eyes, and neither of them looked away, not even for a second. This method of communication was terrifying, and he knew Isaac would probably be able to feel the thundering of his overworked, terrified heart, but that didn’t even bother him that much.
“I mean, I knew that you were only here because you had to be,” Ben let the words tumble out over each other, spilling from him as though some dam d
eep inside him had finally been allowed free. “I knew that you would find a job, and then you would leave, and I didn’t want you to go. But I was going to tell you. I swear I was. I decided at work that I would that night, but you already knew.”
Ben took a deep breath, anxiety gripping him, making his spine seem to crawl, and his stomach clench like he might actually throw up. When was the last time he had been so open with anyone?
He couldn’t remember, and he soon realized it was because there literally hadn’t ever been a time. He had always kept himself safe and secret, and this was the first time that he had ever shown who he really was, even the bad parts that he wanted to keep safely under wraps.
It was so vulnerable like this. He hated it. But at least he’d spoken the words. At least he could know that he’d done his best. At least, if Isaac did go, he would go knowing the truth, which he deserved.
“You idiot,” Isaac spoke softly, with a strange, suspicious gleam in his eyes, one that looked like they suddenly just had too much moisture in them. Ben swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing, suddenly sure that he had the same shimmer in his own eyes. But it was dark, maybe Isaac wouldn’t notice. “Did it ever occur to you that you could have just asked me to stay?”
Ben blinked his treacherous eyes and shook his head, his words momentarily robbed from him once more. But maybe that was okay because Isaac showed no signs of leaving this time.
“No,” Ben admitted. It seemed strange, in retrospect, that he hadn’t considered just asking for it, since it had clearly been what he wanted, to keep Isaac with him, in his life and in his bed. But it hadn’t. He had lied instead, had kept something important from Isaac.
“I would have stayed,” Isaac admitted, his tone so low that Ben, even as close as he was to Isaac, had to lean forward to make any sense of the words. “In a second, if you had asked me to. I thought you wanted me gone, that was the only reason that I was going to leave.”
