The Family We Make

by Dan Wingreen

  “Are jeans okay?”

  “I guess… Where are you going?”

  “Dunno,” he said, rooting through his jeans pile for something that wasn’t too wrinkled. “He said it was a surprise.”

  Spencer smiled briefly at the less-than-impressed noise that came from the doorway. Connor had never been a fan of surprises for some reason Spencer had never been able to figure out.

  “What’s his name?”

  “It’s Tim,” Spencer answered absently.

  “Tim?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tim Tim?”

  “Yep.” He paused and then poked his head out of the closet. “Is that a problem?”

  Connor’s face scrunched up like he’d bitten into a lemon that was filled with other, even more bitter lemons. “He’s my friend.”

  “He’s my friend too,” Spencer said, his calm voice a complete contrast to the panicky refrain of please don’t have a problem with this, please don’t have a problem with this running through his head at the speed of light.

  “You’re going on a date with my friend.”

  Spencer debated for half a second, then decided that this conversation was too important to rush through half-naked. He dropped the clothes he’d picked out on the floor and pulled on the first oversized sleep shirt he saw. It was ratty, but it came down almost to his knees so he figured he’d covered up enough that Connor wouldn’t complain when he hugged him. Which is exactly what he did when he left the closet. Connor didn’t struggle, but he also didn’t hug back.

  “Yes,” Spencer said, pulling back and staring his son in the eye. “I’m going on a date with Tim, who’s your friend and mine, and I really, really want him to be more.”

  “Why?”

  A small, slightly strained, slightly giddy laugh forced its way out of Spencer’s throat. “Fuck if I know, kid. I just…really like him. He makes me feel…happy.”

  Which was, apparently, the wrong thing to say. Not just because it was incredibly embarrassing but because of the stricken expression on Connor’s face after he said it.

  “Connor…?”

  Connor chewed his lip. “I don’t make you happy?”

  “No. Nonono, that’s not…” He bit back a frustrated sigh. This dating thing had been so much easier when Connor was five and two hundred miles away. “Hey, look at me.”

  Connor shook his head, a move much more reminiscent of that long-gone five-year-old than the teenager he’d become. Spencer had to physically shake himself to keep from drowning in the sudden wave of bittersweet nostalgia that came over him.

  “Hey,” he repeated softly, gently lifting Connor’s head by the chin. The watery shimmer in his kid’s eyes nearly broke his heart. “You have never made me anything but insanely happy, okay? You’ve been the best thing about my life since the day you were born. The people in the hospital nursery didn’t even have to tell me which one was you because I knew the second I saw your scrunched-up little face. You looked exactly the same as every other little wrinkly, malformed raisin, but I already loved you so much that I knew you were my raisin. And nothing’s changed, okay?”

  Connor’s brow furrowed. “I…” He shook his head. “Then why do you need Tim to be happy?”

  Spencer sighed and just barely stopped himself from saying because men have needs, which was a sentence that had never solved anything in the entire history of spoken language. “It’s a different kind of happiness.”

  “That sounds like bullshit.”

  “It’s really not,” Spencer said, smothering the fond smile that wanted to spring to life at the familiar sass. “It’s…” He sighed again and then shrugged and gave his son a half smile. “I’m lonely, kid. Tim makes me feel like I don’t need to be.”

  Connor raised an eyebrow. “You have more friends than I do.”

  “It’s a different kind of loneliness.”

  “Oh my God, you’re talking about sex.”

  “No!” Spencer’s face started to burn. “I’m talking about…” God, this is so hard. “Haven’t you ever had a crush?”

  Connor blinked. “No.”

  “Really?”

  Connor nodded. Spencer’s shoulder’s slumped, even as the dadness inside him did a tiny little jig at not having to deal with that particular bit of puberty right now. “Then this is harder to explain, but…okay. You know how sometimes you feel like I don’t love you, and I’m going to leave you, and you’ll be all alone forever?” Connor grimaced, but nodded again. “Okay. Well, part of me feels that bad all the time. And it sucks, but I can ignore it because I have you, and I have Aunt Cass and your grandparents, and we’ve got a pretty decent life going, you know? But…when I’m with Tim, that feeling goes away. I feel like…I feel like I can want more. Like I deserve more. And even though our life is great, and I love it, and I love you, and I wouldn’t change anything if it meant I had to lose any of what we have, Tim makes me feel like I can have all that and more and, God, kid, I want that. I want it so bad. I want to have you and Tim, and I want…” He broke off and swallowed roughly.

  I want us all to be a family. That’s what he wanted to say, but he couldn’t. Not out loud, and not to Connor, who was already dealing with so much. Especially not when whatever was going on with him and Tim was still so new with every potential in the world for disaster.

  “I want you to be okay with that.” He brushed Connor’s curls away from his forehead, smiling slightly when they sprang right back into place just like his own. “Are you okay with it?”

  Please say yes. If you say no, I can’t do this, and I want to do it so fucking bad.

  Instead of answering, Connor hugged him so hard Spencer had to struggle to breathe as he returned the hug just as tightly. They stayed that way for a while, Spencer bathing in the feeling of holding his little family in his arms even as he hoped that, one day, there could be another set of arms surrounding them both. Eventually, Connor started to pull away, and even though it was the last thing Spencer wanted, he let him go. Connor stared at him for a long moment, seeming small and fragile in a way Spencer had never seen on him before, before pressing his lips together and standing up straight.

  “You should probably get dressed,” he said. Spencer politely ignored the way his voice wasn’t quite steady.

  Spencer decided that was probably as much approval as he could hope for right then. “What?” he asked, spreading his arms and showing off his—dear God, I thought I threw this out—threadbare Buffy and Angel T-shirt, the one with the huge ancient mystery stain right on David Boreanaz’s face. “Not good enough to go out in?”

  Connor’s lips twitched. “Not unless you’re going to Walmart.”

  Spencer snorted. “We might be, for all I know.”

  Although the odds of Tim being classier than that were pretty high, so back into the closet he went. He shucked the shirt and went back to his search. After a short deliberation, he pulled on a pair of tight jeans, wiggling a bit to get them on all the way, and then picked up the shirt he’d dropped earlier and buttoned it up, taking a second to savor the unmistakably sensual feeling of fabric sliding across freshly shaven skin before slipping the sweater on. After running his fingers through his mostly dry hair a few times, he slid into his favorite pair of purple Converse, stepped out of the closet, and spread his arms again.

  “So? Do I look okay?”

  Connor studied him critically, but before he could say anything, the doorbell rang.

  “Shit!” hissed Spencer. “I’m not ready. Go answer the door, please?”

  Connor paled slightly, but dutifully turned on his heel and left. Spencer didn’t have any more time to hope that Connor was going to be okay with him dating Tim. He barely had enough time to run into the bathroom, quickly brush his teeth, style his hair as best he could, and give himself a quick spritz with the first body spray he saw, which happened to be strawberry. Spencer gave himself one last glance in the mirror, not finding anything too horrible about his appearance, aside from e
verything he usually hated about himself. He took a deep breath and glared at his reflection.

  Please don’t screw this up.

  Back in his bedroom, he picked his black thigh-length wool coat up off the floor and put it on, taking a moment to smooth the slightly wrinkled fabric out before grabbing his keys, wallet, and phone and heading toward the front door.

  “Hey, sorry I’m…” Spencer stopped dead in the middle of the hall.

  Oh. My. God.

  Spencer had read a lot of classic literary romance in his life, an unavoidable side effect of studying to be a literature teacher. He’d never enjoyed them. They were too melodramatic, with stupid people doing stupid things because of emotions they couldn’t coherently explain. He’d read a thousand first meetings between destined “true loves.” A thousand overwrought, angst-ridden internal monologues. A thousand different paragraphs-long descriptions of how this or that character was ruined or devastated merely by glancing at the person they claimed to love. It always came off as incredibly childish to him, like an (admittedly well-written) entry in some tween girl’s diary about how super-hot her boyfriend was and how they were going to be together forever and get married and have a million kids and blah blah blah. The kinds of things that happened in romance novels never happened with real adults, something he’d argued loudly—and constantly—with the people in his college classes and more than one of his literature professors.

  Apparently, he owed them all a huge fucking apology.

  Because he’d always known Tim was attractive, but Tim dressed up for a date—no, Tim dressed up for a date with Spencer—was on a whole different level. His hair had been teased back off his forehead, held in place with some kind of product that made it look like the softest thing ever. He wore dark, fitted jeans—fitted jeans!—that clung to his thighs in a way that had to be illegal in at least a few states, along with a thick white cable-knit sweater that contrasted beautifully with his slightly tanned skin.

  Overall, Tim looked…kind of devastating.

  Fitted jeans and a sweater. I might actually die right here in the fucking hallway.

  Tim seemed slightly confused by something, and Connor was nowhere to be seen, but the moment he saw Spencer, his eyes brightened and a smile bloomed on his face that fit a hundred different clichés Spencer would never admit to knowing off the top of his head.

  “Hi,” Tim said. It would have sounded inane coming from anyone else, but Spencer was so fucking gone that a stupid greeting made him flush and duck his head. The small part of him that could think something other than Guh! really hoped this wasn’t going to be a thing for the whole night.

  “Hey…”

  Spencer glanced up in time to see the tail end of Tim checking him out.

  “You look amazing.”

  “Yeah.” Spencer flushed even harder. “I mean…”

  Tim smiled again. Smiled with lips that had, the last time they’d seen each other, been kissing Spencer.

  “Yeah…”

  He had no idea how long he stood there like a moron waiting for his brain to reboot, but enough time passed for Tim to start nervously rubbing his hands over the tops of his thighs.

  “So…are you ready to go?”

  Spencer tore his eyes away from everything below Tim’s waist and focused on his face.

  “Uh, yeah.” He cleared his throat and ran down his incredibly out-of-date predate checklist, trying to think of anything he was forgetting. I shaved, showered, I don’t have homework anymore… “Fourteen’s good for not having a babysitter, right?”

  Tim laughed. “I’m sure Connor will be fine.”

  Fuck, I hope so. He shook off his worries about Connor as best he could.

  “Probably. Not like he has any friends to have wild, boozy sex parties with,” Spencer said.

  “I don’t think he’d be the type even if he had friends.”

  “Like father, like son.”

  Tim let out an obviously fake sigh. “Damn, now I need to change the whole date around.”

  Spencer laughed. “I dunno, hot stuff, for you I could probably make an—oh my God, no, I can’t even finish, holy shit.”

  “‘Hot stuff’?”

  “Shut up.”

  They shared a grin, which devolved into snickering when they both jumped as someone blew their horn right outside the house.

  “Come on,” Tim said. “I think the cabbie’s getting impatient.”

  A joke about city people and their public transportation died on Spencer’s lips as Tim held his hand out to him. He stared down at it, unable to describe the feeling that came over him as anything other than warm.

  “Is something wrong?” Tim asked, his smile starting to fade.

  Spencer shook his head. “No. It’s…” He shrugged and glanced up at Tim. “I’ve…never held hands in public before.”

  Tim’s hand started to drop. “We don’t—”

  Spencer grabbed him, twining their fingers together almost without thought like it was something they’d done a thousand times before.

  “No,” he said quietly, “we really do.”

  He squeezed Tim’s hand.

  “Spencer…”

  “Come on,” Spencer said, ignoring the tightening in his chest and trying not to think of how pathetically grateful he was that Tim was willing to touch him—claim him, if only as his date for the night—in front of other people; even if “other people” in this case meant a single impatient cabbie. “We’ve got a mystery date to get to, right?”

  Without waiting for Tim to answer, he opened the door and pulled him outside.

  *

  They held hands for the whole cab ride.

  Tim never thought something so simple would be anything to take note of. He’d held hands on dates all the time; in restaurants, in malls, on the street, and it had been a long time since he gave such a simple touch any special thought.

  The same was obviously not true for Spencer.

  Despite being the one who’d dragged Tim out of his house and into the waiting cab, he couldn’t stop giving the cabbie nervous glances every minute or so. The last thing Tim wanted to do was make him uncomfortable, especially since he knew this date was going to be weird enough on its own, but every time he started to pull his hand away, Spencer tightened his grip, smiled thinly, and gave his arm a violent little yank.

  It was strangely sweet, but also a little heartbreaking. It wasn’t the nineties anymore; it wasn’t even the first decade of the twenty-first century. Holding hands with a date, even if that date was another guy, shouldn’t be something anyone had to stress about. The way Spencer so obviously wanted the contact even though it scared him made Tim want to punch every single person Spencer had gone to school with. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with any of Spencer’s old boyfriends, but it would be more violent than a punch. Spencer had only vaguely mentioned his dating history, mostly in offhand comments, but Tim knew enough. Spencer had been in at least one relationship before, and Tim had no idea how anyone could be with him and not want to shower him with affection, to draw out more of those blushes and shy smiles, to bask in the feeling of being the focus of Spencer’s full, unguarded attention.

  There was a slight possibility Tim was more than a little bit besotted, but he couldn’t help it. Spencer hit every single one of his protective, caring instincts, and even though he promised himself he would be cautious this time, it would take a much stronger man than Tim had ever been to resist falling for Spencer. He was also sure that, once Spencer finally started to relax and get used to it, he would take to being loved like a flower to the sun.

  And this is not something I should be thinking about on our first date.

  Especially not when there was still plenty of time for Spencer to hate where he was taking him.

  “So, we’re in the cab now,” Spencer said, his voice just low enough for Tim to realize he was trying to keep the cabbie from overhearing. “Do I get to know where we’re going, yet?”

 
; “It’s a surprise,” Tim said, hoping he was doing a good job at hiding his nervousness. Spencer made a face, and he laughed. “Not a fan?”

  “Of surprises?” Spencer raised an eyebrow. “Hell no, I love surprises. It’s the waiting for them part I suck at.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind for Christmas,” Tim said, unable to resist teasing even though he wasn’t sure how Spencer would react to the assumption that they’d still be together at Christmas.

  “Oh God, I used to be such a little shit before Christmas,” Spencer said with a soft laugh. “I could barely get to sleep I was so excited, so I pretty much just kept my parents awake and miserable half the night. Hiding all the cookies and soda in the house was the only way to get me to sleep before three in the morning.”

  Tim laughed. “I wish I could have seen that.”

  “I don’t. It’s gonna be hard enough…” He glanced down and mumbled the rest.

  “Sorry, I didn’t get that last part.”

  Spencer sighed, glanced at the cabbie again, then lifted his head. “I said it’s gonna be hard enough trying to convince you I’m worth dating. Last thing I need is you having been there when I was a stupid little kid.”

  “I already think you’re worth dating,” Tim said, giving Spencer’s hand a gentle squeeze.

  “You think I’m worth a date,” Spencer corrected. A second later he crinkled his nose and then muttered under his breath, chastising himself about how “pathetic it is to say shit like that on a first date.”

  A fond smile tugged at Tim’s lips, and he happily went about fixing the misconception.

  “I already think you’re worth dating,” Tim repeated. “I don’t date casually. Not…” Now it was Tim’s turn to trail off with a grimace. Going into his Rudy issues on their first date would be a much bigger faux pas than anything Spencer might have done so far. The cab suddenly took a sharp turn, and he used the momentum as an excuse to lean his head closer to Spencer’s.

  “I wouldn’t have asked you out if all I wanted was one date,” Tim murmured. “I want a whole lot more than that.”

  Spencer bowed his head again, but this time Tim could see a small, pleased smile. “Yeah?”