Counterpoint

by Anna Zabo

Yes, it had been. “The books you’ve read about BDSM...fiction or non?”

  “Oh, fiction. Um. Erotic, mostly.” Adrian felt the heat of Dominic’s skin against his own.

  “Then I should lend you some nonfiction ones. Maybe that’ll help.”

  Dominic snorted a laugh, which Adrian didn’t expect, but his smile was perfect and Adrian drank that in.

  “You know, in all the sexy librarian romances, it’s usually the librarian who’s the shy, timid one.” Dominic gestured at himself. “He’s usually not the ripped, worldly hero who sweeps the other off his feet.”

  Adrian couldn’t breathe for a moment, because his lungs were too tight. Dominic was warm and solid and a joy next to him. Finally, he caught a breath. “Did I sweep you off your feet?”

  “Yeah, I think. Maybe that’s why I keep ending up on my knees.”

  No doubt he’d end up there again, before the day was through. Adrian stroked a finger over Dominic’s mouth. “I think we should get dressed. Go for a walk. Talk. I’d love to hear more about what you’ve been reading, my dear bookish man. And you can ask me whatever you like.”

  “Even about California?” He spoke around Adrian’s finger.

  Dominic must have felt Adrian flinch, because apprehension filled his eyes. That vanished the moment Adrian pressed his finger between those silky lips. He savored Dominic’s throaty moan. “Even about California. They weren’t the best years of my life.”

  Though there had been moments of utter brilliance. But in the end, he’d been alone and bereft.

  Dominic sucked gently on Adrian’s finger, licking and nipping, and every warmth filled Adrian now. “If you keep that up, I’m going to take you upstairs, bend you over my bed, and fuck you so hard, you’ll regret it later.”

  As he hoped and, honestly, expected, Dominic only sucked harder. Adrian laughed and hauled the man up into his arms so he could claim that mouth again. Then he did exactly as he had promised, much to Dominic’s delight, judging by his cries and screams of pleasure.

  Chapter Eight

  Despite their detour to the bedroom, they still ended up on their walk. They both wore jeans and Adrian wore a T-shirt. He would have gladly lent one to Dominic as well, but he’d asked for a button-down with sleeves.

  “I don’t always like showing off my tattoos.”

  “They were for you.” Adrian traced the colors and lines of his favorite, the Dara knot Dominic sported on his shoulder.

  After a sensuous little shudder, Dominic nodded. “Yeah. They all mean something to me.”

  “This one?” He knew the meaning and wondered if Dominic did.

  “Strength. Security. It’s an oak knot. Supposed to represent roots.”

  “Inner strength,” Adrian murmured. “Power and wisdom. It’s perfect for you.”

  Dominic’s eyes were wide.

  “I’m Irish-American, remember?” Adrian gestured at himself. “It’s somewhat obvious.”

  While Dominic stood slack-jawed, Adrian pulled out one of his tighter button-downs. It was loose on Dominic’s frame. The fabric was pale yellow, and Adrian couldn’t help kiss that inked skin again before Dominic covered it up. “Thank you for sharing your tattoos with me.”

  “Kinda hard to have sex with clothing on.”

  “Not really.”

  Dominic got a look, then laughed. “Okay, you’re right there. For hookups I usually didn’t take my top off.”

  But Dom had for Adrian. He savored that knowledge. He’d seen all of Dominic, every line, every inch of flesh. Tasted just about all of it, as well.

  They headed out into the summer sun and tried to stay in the shade of buildings and trees as they rambled around the area.

  “You said you wanted to know about California.”

  Dominic nodded. “If you’re fine with that.”

  More or less. “I was born here. I grew up in that house.” He gestured in the direction of his home. “And back in the ’80s, this wasn’t the neighborhood it is now.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard. And I guess the gentrification pushed a lot of people out.”

  It had, and that grated on Adrian, even though he was, in part, also part of that process. “My granda bought the place in the ’50s, and my folks held on to it, but it needed so much upkeep and so many repairs. It wasn’t in the greatest of shape when me and my siblings lived there.”

  Dom stopped. “You have siblings?”

  Adrian turned toward Dom. “Two brothers and a sister. I’m actually the youngest. And the one who stayed—well, came back.” He held out his hand, and Dominic took it.

  “I’m an only child.” His voice was soft. “Do you get along?”

  “We did. Things are strained now. I’m hoping they’ll ease up in the future.”

  “This is a longer story than just why you went to California and came back, isn’t it?”

  Adrian laughed. “Oh yes.” Years and years in the making. “Money. Religion. Wealth. A prodigal son. It’s practically biblical.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Him, too.”

  Dominic swallowed a laugh.

  Adrian gave his hand a squeeze and contemplated where to begin, because like the knot-work on Dominic’s arm, the story looped and tangled in on itself. “As you might imagine, my parents were Catholic and devout, and we were raised as such.”

  “Oh shit. And you’re queer.”

  Oh shit, indeed. “Yes, that’s part of it. Didn’t help that my second oldest brother, Patrick, went off to become a priest.” The light of his parents’ lives, or so he’d thought. “I idolized him when I was young. Thought about going into seminary myself.”

  “You didn’t!”

  “Well, no. I didn’t. Especially when I realized what the Church said about people like me.” He waved a hand. “Yes, they dress it up pretty, and yes, there’s a faction that doesn’t believe queers are sinners, but doctrine is doctrine, and you can read that we’re disordered right on the Vatican website, so...”

  “I probably shouldn’t interrupt, or you’ll never get it out.”

  Now that was true. “It’s a mess, Dominic. I’m not sure I can explain it all, but I’ll try to take the most direct route.”

  He launched into it. His eldest brother, Sean, had gone into the military, Patrick had become a priest, and Moira married a rather well-off investment banker, all before Adrian had gone to college.

  “I was essentially an ‘oops’ baby.”

  “So you kind of grew up alone, too.”

  “I suppose in a way. They were around for my early years, but were gone for the later ones. Mainly, I was my mother’s baby boy. My father’s, too, for a while. He worked in construction, on the white-collar end. Management. Finances. Still, with four kids, he also worked a job at a diner as a cook—one of those twenty-four-hour types.”

  “City that never sleeps.”

  Adrian gave Dominic’s hand a little squeeze. “It meant that I didn’t see Dad as much as Mom, and thing were always a little strained between us.” Awkward and tense, as if his father hadn’t known what to do with the quiet child he’d sired. The one who devoured books, was good with computers, and tied up every single one of his GI Joes.

  “Patrick and Sean had both been into sports. I was a nerd. Dad didn’t know what to do with me on weekends, since his go-to activities were things I only tolerated.”

  They passed one of the many coffee shops that had sprung up in Brooklyn, though this one wasn’t as pretentious as some of the others. Dominic slowed. “Can we stop in? I think I need some more caffeine. And strangely, I’m a little sore this morning.”

  Adrian pulled Dominic close and kissed him, right outside the door. “I can’t imagine why that would be. And yes, let’s fuel you up.”

  There was an industrial and secondhand feel to the place. Exposed beams and pi
pes. Wood and brick. Mismatched tables and chairs. The customers were a mix. Ages and ethnicities. Sexualities and genders, too. Adrian made a mental note to come back. This was a place he could frequent. Support.

  Dominic ordered a large raspberry latte, then bumped Adrian’s hip when he snorted. “I can’t make this at home, so shut up.”

  “I didn’t say a word.” Adrian caressed the back of his neck, then ordered a regular coffee with a mound of whipped cream.

  Dominic hip-checked him again, and Adrian laughed. Someone wanted to be even more sore before the day was out.

  “So,” Dominic said as they sat down together on an old love seat. “High school.”

  Adrian took a sip and considered both the coffee and how to tell his story. The coffee was damn good—another reason to return. He set the mug down. “I knew I was interested in more than just women by the time I was a freshman. And I realized very quickly that I was a little more interested in masculine than anything else, regardless of gender. But I didn’t come out to my parents until I was a junior—when my senior boyfriend asked me to the prom, and I said yes.”

  “Did they—Were they—” Dominic stopped. “Mine were fine with me. But I know not everyone—” Such concern. Such honest worry. Adrian patted his thigh.

  “It took them by complete surprise, and that played into their first reactions. But they did love me, so they came around, especially Mom. She was more worried about how I might struggle through life. They’d been very aware of the AIDS crisis, even though by the mid-to late-’90s, things were much better.”

  There’d been tears and worries and long conversations about safety and love and not jumping into anything too fast. Some of the conversations he knew they’d had with his other siblings when they’d started dating.

  “Thankfully, they did get the whole thing about teens having sex, so I didn’t get a sanctimonious lecture about fucking—or not fucking. At least not from them.”

  “Oh shit. Your brother.”

  His brother, the priest. “Father Patrick Doran. Sanctimonious out the ass.” He sighed and the spike of pain made him reach for his mug of coffee. “He was livid. Absolutely livid. I didn’t know why, really. Still don’t. We stopped talking. But I know it wasn’t just about Church doctrine.”

  Dominic took Adrian’s free hand. “Oh hell, I’m sorry.”

  The warmth in Dominic’s voice and in his hand tightened Adrian’s chest and tumbled his heart. “Sean was fine with it, but not what came later.” He took another swallow of coffee. “Moira still talks to me. She and her husband figured out what I’d done, so while they were horrible shits after Mom died, they both apologized later.”

  Dominic held on to his hand more tightly. “Yeah, you’re right, this is complex. I’ll be quiet. You talk.”

  Adrian’s bark of laughter had no mirth. He leaned back on the love seat, fortified by coffee and Dominic’s hand, and launched into the tangled and woven tale.

  He’d come out, gone to his boyfriend’s prom, and dealt with the fallout from that—including Patrick’s spiritual “counseling” that had done more to drive him out of Catholicism than anything else. For his own prom, he’d gone with a very cute trans guy his own age—one who’d allowed Adrian to tie him up with scarves and shit. The latter, of course, he’d never confessed to his parents.

  Some things he never shared.

  For college, he’d ended up at SUNY in Buffalo and gotten his BA in computer science in three years. Then, like every other tech person at the time, he’d headed out to California and hopped from start-up to start-up.

  “I made a decent pile of cash despite the dot-com burst. Focused on equipment companies and financial ones. Stuff that was still making money. Which was good, because my father died and I learned my mom was about to lose the house.”

  The funeral had been hellish. Patrick had presided over the Mass, of course, which meant Adrian had been locked out of just about every part of that. His mother, in her grief, hadn’t noticed that he’d been the only one of her children not to have a part. Not a reading. Not a psalm. Not even bringing up the gifts before Communion. Shut out completely.

  So he’d stood next to his mother and been her support, her pillar. The arms that had held her up even as he wanted to dive deep into his own complex grief for his father—a man he loved and didn’t understand and wished he could have.

  In the days that followed, he remained close to his mother, helping her with everything his father had taken care of—or hadn’t, as it turned out. Their finances were a mess. Yes, his father had his pension, and yes, there was some life insurance, but the cost of raising four kids and sending them to college—even with Sean’s ROTC scholarship—then sending Patrick to seminary had led his dad to mortgage the brownstone twice. And there wasn’t enough to cover everything and provide for his mother to live on.

  So Adrian had quietly cashed out as much of his stock options as he could, and taken over paying the mortgage. He would not see his mother lose the family home. Not the house his grandfather—her father—had worked so hard to obtain. Both he and his mother had decided it would be best if his siblings didn’t know. Sean was on active duty. Moira was struggling to start a family of her own, and both she and her husband had their own burdens. And Patrick—well. He couldn’t help. Not on a priest’s salary. All the finery that surrounded him was none of his own.

  Adrian had headed back to California to work, found a smaller place, and worked as many hours as he could to keep earning what he’d needed to for both himself and his mom. Did freelance work on the side to earn a little extra.

  And because he’d managed to pull a decent amount out of the market, he’d done okay in the end. Yes, he’d lost his job a couple times, and scrambled and scraped to grab a new one, but he’d come out on top. In the end, he’d paid off one of his parents’ mortgages and the other had a sizable dent in it. His mom was safe and learning to live again, surrounding herself with friends and knitting and books and volunteer work.

  In California, Adrian had dated all over the spectrum and learned quite a lot about himself, his love of bondage and domination, but also his apathy toward much of pain play. “I can flog someone,” he murmured, dropping his voice. “It just doesn’t do anything for me.”

  “I like what we’ve done so far,” Dominic replied.

  Both their cups were empty, so Adrian took the opportunity to sling an arm around Dominic and pull him close. “Good. If there’s any aspect you don’t like—”

  “Believe me, I’ll tell you. I’ve got a mouth.”

  “Yes, yes you do.” Adrian tipped Dominic’s chin up and took those lips into a sweet kiss. Not a long one, though, because they were in public—and he needed to finish his story.

  Dominic settled against him, and he fell back into it. “For all that I made money, had decent jobs, and found myself in California, I wasn’t happy there. I missed New York with every bone in my body. The scant time I’d been back had only increased that ache. I’d already lost large portions of my family and I felt like I was losing touch with all my roots, too.”

  The disdain some of his West Coast acquaintances—even the few people he’d dated—had shown to the city of his birth rankled every time. Especially since most of those people were transplants like him. The traffic, the car culture, and the lack of actual seasons also got on all his nerves. He’d glimpse the skyline of New York on TV and the reaction, the deep longing, had been so visceral every time.

  “I would occasionally float my résumé out in New York, but the economy wasn’t great at the time, so I either got no nibbles or ones that wouldn’t bring in the income I needed to help mom.”

  “But you did come back, eventually.”

  Adrian nodded. “Six years ago, my mom died.”

  Dominic took a breath. “Oh.”

  Adrian closed his eyes for a bit. He’d mourned her the way he ne
ver could for his dad. Patrick had still said the Mass and he’d still been locked out, but he’d been there for her when his other siblings hadn’t.

  “She was sick leading up to it. Didn’t tell anyone right away. Finally told me. I had vacation stored up, so I pretty much dropped everything and ran home.” He grunted. “She was—well. A week later, she died. I was there, holding her hand in the hospital.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Whispered words.

  Adrian stroked Dominic’s hair. “Thank you.” He coughed to clear out the sudden tightness in his throat.

  “What changed everything was Mom’s will. She left me the house. Me. No one else. Everything else had been divided equally between the four of us, but the house was mine.”

  Dominic sat up. “Makes sense. You were paying it off.”

  He nodded. “I’d actually completely paid it off by then. But my siblings didn’t know that. Patrick—good, loving priest that he is, so open to forgiveness and all that shit—was convinced that I’d somehow taken advantage of Mom and had her change the will. Even though it had been that way for a pile of years.”

  “I think I hate your brother.”

  Adrian’s chuckle was dark. “Every last one of my friends does.” He sobered. “I can’t even blame the Church entirely, because not everyone’s like that. He just...clings to the most conservative parts that he can without actually being in schism.”

  His own feelings were so much more complex. Patrick had been kind to him when he’d been a boy and he couldn’t quite forget that, even if Patrick had shut the door completely as an adult.

  “The other problem was that the gentrification of Brooklyn had begun and the housing prices shot up. That house is worth quite a bundle now.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Dominic laughed. “All too well.”

  Because he’d bought in Brooklyn. On a musician’s salary. Adrian turned that over in his head again, then set it aside.

  “My siblings contested the will. All of them. Took forever for it to get resolved, but it was, and the judge ruled in my favor. Sean was disgusted that I was so—money-grubbing, he said. Moira didn’t talk to me until about a year later. Her husband dug into the house and figured out Mom couldn’t have been paying the mortgage, and realized I had. They called and apologized. Said she’d speak to the others, but...no word from Sean.” Adrian shrugged. “So six years ago, I quit my job on the West Coast and moved home. Lived on savings until I got a job here, renovated the house, and moved in.”