Slow Pitch

by Amy Lane

  “I’m bi,” he said, like it was an introduction. “And you’re right—it shouldn’t matter. But it does, because now I’m involved in your life in an unexpected way.”

  She nodded, shoving food in the refrigerator. “That’s it. I’m… I’m so bad at the unexpected,” she said, like she expected him to contradict her.

  “Some people are,” he said neutrally. “I’m actually sort of good at it.”

  She gave him a dry look, and he returned it with his most winning smile.

  At that moment they heard Tenner from the living room. “Ross? And your mother? In the kitchen together?”

  Tenner’s bare feet on the hardwood came next, and Ross got up just in time to catch him as he bounced off the doorframe with his shoulder.

  “Take it easy,” he said, steadying Tenner’s shoulders. “She hasn’t killed me. She probably doesn’t feel like cooking, and we’re too sick to be the main course.”

  “Ou—”

  “Tenner, are you okay?” Nina called from the other side of the counter.

  “—uch…,” he finished, rubbing his shoulder and looking down at his toe.

  “Here, baby. Come sit.” Ross guided Tenner to the kitchen table and sat him down. “I’m going to grab us some ibuprofen and maybe some crackers, okay?”

  “I’ll nuke some soup,” Nina said helpfully, and Ross saw her eyes darting from Tenner, who was still a little dazed, to Ross and back.

  Well, awkwierd and helpful.

  Complicated in spades.

  “Daddy, are you okay?” Piper came running in from the living room, and unlike her father, she wasn’t disoriented from fever and congestion, so there was no running into the doorframe.

  “Fine, pumpkin,” Tenner said, eyes on Nina.

  “Daddy’s fine,” Nina said, and her eyes did that little dart from Ross to Tenner and back again. “You were right—Ross is taking care of him.”

  “Can I go get my color books and pet Joe?” Piper asked happily. “He was asleep on Daddy’s bottom when we got in, wasn’t he? Wasn’t it funny when Ross got out from underneath him and the cat stayed on Daddy’s bottom?”

  “Laugh riot,” Tenner muttered, and Ross chuckled.

  “Go ahead,” Nina said. “Joe probably missed you this weekend.” She wrinkled her nose. “Although I think Daddy missed his cat box this week.”

  “Shit,” Tenner said abruptly.

  “I think that was her point,” Ross said, smirking. “Here, I’ll get it—”

  “No,” Tenner said, fighting to rise. “I can do it.”

  “Both of you sit down,” Nina said sharply. “God. I’m not that much of a bitch. Let me get you guys some lunch, then I’ll take care of it. Believe it or not, I know how to change the cat box.”

  “Sorry, Nina,” Tenner said wretchedly, and Ross ignored the ex-wife and rubbed soft circles on Tenner’s lower back.

  “No, I’m the one who’s sorry,” she said, putting a two-person serving tub of soup in the microwave and pressing buttons. “It’s not your fault I’m a freak who can’t deal with change.”

  “Harsh,” Ross muttered.

  “Just shut up, both of you, and let me pretend this is all normal and fine, and eventually it will be normal and fine, okay?”

  Ross got it. In fact, he was pretty sure this was how prejudice in all its forms would eventually be conquered. By people working really hard to forget all the things they’d been programmed to believe. It didn’t come easy. Children had to learn to hate—adults had to learn to let go of it.

  “That’s fine,” Ross said, feeling the tiredness that had taken him and Tenner out when they’d been on the couch resurface. “Honestly, I don’t know if either one of us is in any shape to fight you.”

  She gave a grim smile. “And maybe that’s a blessing. I’ve got to tell you, it’s really hard to get pissed at Tenner for something that isn’t his fault when he looks like a stiff wind is going to knock him over.”

  “I am not that pathetic,” Tenner mumbled, setting his chin down on his fists.

  Ross blew on him, laughing at his outrage. And as he was laughing, he heard an amazing sound.

  Nina was laughing too.

  Piper came in and joined them for lunch, everybody being very careful not to breathe on each other. Nina shooed them back into the living room to sit while she cleaned up, and Piper marched in, giving them directions.

  “So Ross is going to sit in that corner, and Daddy’s going to lean up against Ross, and I’m going to put a pillow here and lean up against Daddy, and that way I won’t get sick.”

  Ross quirked his mouth. “I like this plan.”

  “Good, because we’ve been making this plan A all week,” Tenner responded. He yawned into his shoulder and swore. “Darn it. I don’t want to sleep anymore.”

  Ross made himself comfy and raised his arm, gratified when Tenner leaned up against him. Well, whether Piper knew what it meant or not, Tenner couldn’t deny that the cow had left that particular barn.

  “Okay, Daddy. You and Ross are all cozy. I’ll go get you a blanket.” She disappeared into the guest bedroom and came back with the quilted fleece blanket that usually sat at the foot of Tenner’s bed upstairs. She gave Ross one corner and Tenner the other, and together they huddled under the blanket in absolute perfection.

  “Good,” she said. “That’s how you should be.”

  She got her coloring books again and sat on Tenner’s other side, singing to herself. Tenner took the remote control and found a station with cartoons on it. Then the two of them slid underwater again, but this time, it was a wee bit warmer.

  THE NEXT day they were fever-free and exhausted. Ross told Tenner he hadn’t slept so much since he’d spent sixty hours traveling from Finland to Colombia, then back to the States.

  “How did you even know which country you were in?” Tenner asked fuzzily from his accustomed spot on Ross’s chest.

  “I had no idea. An airport’s a fucking airport. Unless you’re in Detroit or Dulles, and then it’s a portal to hell, and I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Poor, poor, baby, who gets to travel a lot. Your life must be very hard.”

  Ross grimaced slightly at the bitterness. “I keep telling you, I’ll return here.” He had, in fact, already told Jimmy Dowd this. “I mean, you’re giving me something to come back to, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Tenner said unequivocally. And then, because he was Tenner and nothing could be easy or simple with the guy, he added, “But I’m not out to Piper yet, and—”

  Ross snorted. “Says you!”

  “Fine. I haven’t had the talk with her.”

  “The talk. Is that in italics or all caps or in quotation marks or what?”

  “Shut up,” Tenner muttered.

  “I think we need to make a rule that you can’t use ‘shut up.’”

  “Can I use ‘bite me’? Is ‘bite me’ a thing we can use?”

  Ross pretended to think. “Only if actual biting will be involved. For example,” he said experimentally, “if I bit you gently on the neck right now, what do you think your reaction would be?”

  Tenner also pretended to think about it. “I’d call you a freak and tell you only two-year-olds bite people.”

  “And what if I bit you tomorrow?”

  More thought. “I would probably bite you back in a potentially sexually pleasing way.”

  “Then no—you may not use ‘bite me’ because you do not mean ‘bite me.’ And honestly, you do not, at the moment, want to be bitten. You are going to have to find better words.”

  Tenner growled. “I want you to come back,” he said, sounding tired and out of sorts and dear. “I want that more than I think you know. I want that more than I think you even guess. But you are doing something really fucking important. I mean, let’s see, send Ross into the world so my kid can have oxygen when she’s grown, or keep him here with us because I am….” His voice faltered. “I am lonely and sad and grumpy without him and
would rather have him here by my side than off in some distant place doing the world good. Which one of these is great for me but bad for the rest of the world? You tell me.”

  Ross lowered his head to Tenner’s neck and bit gently, pleased when Tenner didn’t smack him or tell him he was a freak. Instead, he let out a low, pleasured moan, and Ross’s body gave a sleepy response that made taking Tuesday off to have sex seem like the best idea ever.

  “Ross!” Tenner argued, squirming against Ross’s body, “this is serious!”

  “Yeah, I know.” Ross pulled back and sighed. “Look, I’m not taking the job here because it’s easier than the ones overseas. I’m taking it because getting funding to the places we need in our country is one of my biggest concerns. Cleaning up toxic waste or e-waste takes a lot of money—private citizens can’t do it all. We need to make corporations accountable. And seriously, I had to explain to people how not to kill fish last week. You’d think it would be easy, but somehow, they thought blasting away at the riverbed was going to be all okay fine for the fucking fish. And when I’m done saving the damned fish, I may end up doing a lot of work lobbying for more government money, but I’ll be working for the environmental cleanup company here in Folsom. It’s not a cop-out, Ten. It’s a way to help and to see my family more. And….”

  Oh. Oh, this felt unexpectedly bare and vulnerable.

  “And that includes you. And Piper. And I know I’m not even ‘Uncle Ross’ to her yet, but she thinks I keep her daddy safe, and I want to be that guy. I… I was thinking about coming back already—I told you that. I just need to give my boss the final okay. This whole week, he hasn’t badgered me about work I haven’t done, or about how I’m a consultant who almost died while on sick leave. No, he’s been asking me to give him the go-ahead to hire me back when this next gig in the Amazon is up. What should I tell him?”

  Tenner swallowed. “Tell him….” He buried his face against Ross’s neck. “Tell him your chickenshit boyfriend is terrified that he’s not a good enough reason for you to come back. That every time I think about you leaving, this big black hole opens up in my chest as if you’re going to be gone forever and I’m going to be wondering what I’ve done wrong. And you’re not that guy. I know you’re not that guy. But I yanked ‘happily ever after’ from Nina when she was not expecting it, and I don’t fucking deserve you.”

  Oh.

  That hadn’t been the answer Ross had been hoping for—or expecting—and for a moment, his throat closed up with hurt.

  He took a few deep breaths then, wondering if his heart was going to be able to bounce back from this when he was pretty sure it had shattered on the road outside Tenner’s little suburban mansion, and then some of what Tenner said sank in.

  “You do,” he said gently. “You deserve me. Come on, you haven’t backed down from a fight yet, Tenner, even if we’re just arguing over the remote control. Can’t you trust me to come home when you give me such a good home to come to?”

  Tenner nodded against him. “If you come back to me, you gotta know, I’ll twine around your heart like ivy. I’m not ever letting you go.”

  Well, good. Ross might need a little ivy to hold him together after that kersplat his heart did on the pavement. “Okay,” he whispered. “It’s a deal. But if I come back, you and me are holding hands in public, and when Piper’s over, I’m staying in your bedroom still. We’re together, like a couple, in front of everybody. I want to be a part of your family, Ten. Can you deal with that?”

  Tenner nodded again, raising red-rimmed eyes to meet Ross’s. “Can you deal with the extra work to make Nina be okay with it? With trying to make her part of our little family? I know some guys would be jealous, but you’ve got to know it’s not like that—”

  Ross smoothed his hands back from Tenner’s face and kissed his forehead. “You don’t want her to be alone. It took me a while to figure it out, you know? Most other guys would be losing their shit with her, torching her reputation to her friends, bitching about their evil ex. But you care about her, and you want her to be happy so Piper is happy, but also, so she’s okay herself.”

  “Yeah,” Tenner said, biting his lip. “She… all she wanted with me is what I want with you. A life, a good life, of having someone she can laugh with and someone who loved her and someone who wanted to touch her in a way that made her happy. I couldn’t be that guy, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be her friend. I….” He looked embarrassed. “We were truly good friends there, for the first couple of years.”

  “Do you really want that with me?” Ross asked, getting it.

  “So much. I’m so afraid to hope—you know that. But God, I want you to get off the plane and come fall into my bed and never leave.”

  “Then that’s what I’ll do,” Ross said softly. “If you can hang on for those two months, that’s what I’ll do when I get home. I promise.”

  Tenner still looked a little terrified, but he swallowed and said, “Then tell your boss you want to come back. You’ve got family waiting for you here.”

  Ross smiled softly. “I will—on one condition.”

  Tenner waited, eyes sober. “What?”

  “Sometime, and I’m not saying this week or the next, but before I get on that plane, I want you to hold my hand in front of Piper. Deliberately. So she can tell her classmates that her daddy’s boyfriend is far away, but he’ll be coming home to you. She thinks I’m going to take care of you. She needs to see you have faith in that, or she’ll never believe I’m part of her family forever.”

  Tenner swallowed. “I can manage that,” he said gruffly. He gave a grimace. “I think you’re right—I’m pretty sure it won’t surprise her much.”

  “I’m pretty sure it won’t either,” Ross murmured. He kissed Tenner’s temple. “Sleep, okay? And dream of tomorrow, when I’ll keep biting you until something really interesting happens.”

  Tenner went limp against him. “I can do that,” he said.

  Ross’s heart fluttered in his chest like a struggling moth. Tenner had said it, said it out loud. All Ross had to do was believe in that promise and tell his boss that he meant it too.

  “As long as there’s no clown cars,” Tenner added.

  Ross narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean, no clown cars?”

  “You keep talking clown cars and a trapeze, and seriously, just you is fine.”

  “Fine?” Oh, that wasn’t going to slide.

  “Great!” Tenner amended. “You’re great! We don’t need a clown car! Or a trapeze!”

  “Don’t you trust me to catch you on the trapeze?”

  “Of course I do! But that doesn’t mean I need a clown car up my ass while we’re swinging from the ceiling.”

  “Heh, heh, heh, heh….”

  Tenner pulled back. “What?”

  “Nothing.” Oh God, he really really wanted to do that thing in his head.

  “No, seriously, what?”

  Ross’s sadness, the threatened heartbreak, eased up. God, even if Tenner couldn’t trust in fate, hadn’t that always been Ross’s best thing? And even if Tenner couldn’t—even if he broke Ross’s heart by telling him to fly and be free or some other horseshit that was basically a stand-in for the fact that the guy was afraid to get his own heart hammered—Ross still wanted to spend as much time inside that marvelous body as possible, still wanted to fly with Tenner inside him.

  “I think it’s going to be a surprise,” he said with some satisfaction.

  Tenner narrowed his eyes. “Clown cars up your ass are never a good surprise.”

  “They’re only bad when you fart and run over the cat,” Ross said, spoiling the joke by snorking on his own laughter in the middle.

  But it didn’t matter because Tenner was laughing openly on his chest, and for all Tenner’s doubt, Ross had an abundance of faith.

  And Better or Worse

  MAKING LOVE to Ross was always such a whirlwind. A roller coaster. A hurricane cluster in a tsunami.

  All Ten
ner could do was hold tight and hope Ross could navigate the maelstrom.

  After their afternoon nap the day before, Ross had borrowed Tenner’s car keys and returned an hour later, giggling to himself like an unhinged asylum inmate. Tenner had an idea of where he’d gone, but not what he’d gotten, and he glared.

  “No clown cars,” he threatened direly.

  “You will be begging for clown cars,” Ross assured him, that easy smile on his face. He was a little pale and a little thin, but God, he was still the irrepressible man who had barged into Tenner’s life and not taken no for an answer.

  “Why can’t I just beg for your—” Tenner swallowed, realizing what he almost said out loud, in the middle of his kitchen, as he was preparing their first nonsoup meal in a week. “Uh. You.”

  “Heh, heh, heh, heh….”

  “Shut—”

  “Nope, that’s a rule.”

  Tenner narrowed his eyes. “I would prefer it if we kept all discussion of a sexual nature confined to the bedroom,” he said primly, setting the chicken in the oven to broil.

  The expression on Ross’s face was not promising. “Oh, really?”

  Oh, no. “We are not having sex in the kitchen!” he said, somewhat panicked.

  “Sure, we’re not,” Ross said, and then he dropped his cargo shorts—since he’d been out—and his underwear right there on the kitchen floor. Just dropped them, and stepped out of his shoes.

  Tenner wouldn’t have been more surprised if he’d turned into a rabbit.

  “What in the actual hell?”

  Ross grabbed one of the cushions from the wooden kitchen chairs and threw it on the ground on top of his clothes, then deliberately looked from the cushion to Tenner.

  Tenner had the image, suddenly, himself on his knees, in front of Ross, his mouth on Ross’s cock, his hands clenched against Ross’s asscheeks, his throat full of Ross’s come.