by Rhys Ford
The time ticked on until the alarm on Quinn’s phone sent out a loud brrrt, alerting him and everyone in the room they were on a two-minute countdown to the end of the class. Shutting off the klaxon, he turned back to the students hurriedly shoving laptops and everything else they’d taken out into backpacks, prepping to scurry away to their next class.
“Does anyone have any last questions?” It was a long shot. If there’d been any confusion, the class would have burbled it out during the lecture, but it was something to be done. A lone hand raised up, and Quinn sighed, drawing his eyes up to the smirking rock star sitting near the door. “Does anyone who attends this school have any last questions?”
“Hey, Doc,” Rafe drawled, his rough, hint-of-slow voice curling around each word, caressing Quinn even as he tried to ignore Rafe. “You having office hours today?”
“No, Mr. Andrade.” He returned Rafe’s cocky grin with a stern look. “Although if a student is having issues, I’ll be happy to arrange a time if they can’t make my posted hours.”
“Awesome. Then you and I can lock the door and have a picnic,” Rafe said, standing to let one of Quinn’s students get by him. “Pack up your magic marker, babe. I’ve got a can of whipped cream with your name written all over it.”
“I CANNOT believe you said that,” Quinn grumbled, coating a plump ripe strawberry with a heavy dollop of whipped cream. “How the hell am I supposed to teach in that class now? They think I’m kind of some sex-crazed loon.”
“Honey, you’re wound up so tight sometimes, I’m sure they were just happy to see you’ve got someone in your life.” Rafe picked a stem off of a seedless black grape before placing it on Quinn’s plate. The love seat was a tight fit for them, but Quinn didn’t mind. A quick shuffle of a file cabinet and they had an ad hoc table to lay out everything Rafe brought with him for their impromptu picnic. “And they laughed when you asked if I brought enough strawberries. You’re fine. They don’t think you’re a pervert. Although from the looks some of them gave you, it kind of blows my mind they’re not blinking at you with I love you written on their eyelids.”
“I am not Indiana Jones,” Quinn pointed out. “And no one has ever done that.”
“Only because you probably wouldn’t notice.” Rafe destemmed another grape. “Open up. Incoming.”
Once the grape was secure on his tongue, Quinn chewed, then swallowed. “I’m surprised no one came up to you to ask for a photo or autograph.”
“That’s because I’m the bassist. Best part about it, all of the glory and none of the fame.” Helping himself to one of the strawberries, Rafe waylaid Quinn’s protest with a wave of his hand. “And before you say that they come at me after a show, that’s because I’m in context. That’s a good word. Miki and Damie are the faces of the band. Forest and I just reap the benefits and go shopping at one in the afternoon without being mobbed by people. So it’s a win-win for us. This frees me up for having smexy time with my doc boyfriend whenever I want.”
“We are not having sex in this office,” Quinn warned. “That’ll get me fired. And I like my job. I like teaching history through food influences or examining the evolution of tattoos and their cultural significance. I love you but—”
“I was thinking more along the lines of a dance.” Rafe chuckled, brushing his hands off. Standing up, he held his hand out to Quinn. “Come on, babe. Today’s a special day, actually. One we didn’t take advantage of when we were in high school, and I think it’s time we fixed that.”
“What are you talking about?” Rafe’s fingers were callused, rough from guitar strings and endless hours of playing. There were tiny scars from snapped wires digging into the back of his hand and a pucker on the webbing of his right thumb where he’d hooked it during a fishing excursion they’d all taken when Quinn was ten. He loved Rafe’s hands, loved the feel of them on his body, but right now, Quinn eyed the outstretched hand suspiciously.
“Trust me, magpie. It’ll be worth it, because today is the however-many-year anniversary of our senior prom, and since we didn’t get to dance back then, I figured we should do that now. I’ve even brought some music.”
“Who’d you ask for the music?” Quinn let Rafe drag him to his feet, carefully avoiding the corner of the file cabinet. “Did you ask my mom? Don’t tell me you asked Brigid.”
“I asked Brigid,” Rafe admitted sheepishly. “Everything we listened to in high school wasn’t exactly something you can dance to, and yeah, she chose something a bit cheesy, but it fits.”
“It’s something they dance to, isn’t it?” He sighed. Still, he remembered watching Rafe work his magic on others all through high school, hating being overlooked while knowing his brothers would cheerfully kill their best friend if he laid a hand on Quinn. “Okay, but don’t complain when I step on your toes.”
“Babe, I’m the bassist. You should be watching your feet.” Rafe fiddled with his phone, leaving it angled on the cabinet, and the start of a teeny-bop tune filtered out of the speaker. “There. Now come in close. It’s a playlist of every sickly-sweet slow dance song I could find in what your mom gave me. I figure I’ve got about ten minutes before you die from a sugar overdose.”
Tucked up against Rafe, Quinn let himself drift along in a circle, swaying to the mostly electronic music and ignoring the false soprano wailings of a lovelorn teenaged boy begging a disinterested girl to save him her last dance. It wasn’t dancing so much as it was a prolonged hug, a shuffle around the office floor with no intention of going anywhere but back to where they began just so they could start over again. After a few minutes, Quinn felt the day melt off of him, releasing any tension in his back and shoulders, and Rafe gathered him up closer, supporting him while their circles became a lazy sway.
“Your mom asked me if I was going to propose to you,” Rafe murmured into Quinn’s hair. “I told her she had to mind her own business.”
“How’d that go for you?” Quinn snorted into Rafe’s chest. “She threaten to send you to bed without any dinner?”
“Close,” he said, resting his cheek against Quinn’s. “She told me I couldn’t come over to play with you until I apologized. Just like when I hit Riley with that frozen water balloon.”
“He walked into it.”
“He was two,” Rafe countered. “And she forgave me as soon as she found out Kane was the one who gave me the damned thing. Your dad bailed me out today. He said we can take our time to decide what we want to do. If we want to do anything. I feel like every time they push at us, we just want to not do it.”
“It’s like you know me,” Quinn sighed, then chuckled. “We should elope.”
“She’d kill us.” He moved Quinn about, changing the direction of their shuffle, and the music shifted, deepening into something a bit less maudlin but no less sticky. “But if that’s what you want to do….”
“If… when… if we get married, I’d want to go back to Ireland,” Quinn confessed softly. He’d held an idea of what the day would look like when he and Rafe spoke vows, half wishful-thinking and half daydream. “Nothing big. Just… family, and maybe outside in the old abbey down the road from my gran’s house. Then off to a pub so no one has to cook and we can stumble home drunk later.”
“Nothing big. You’ve got ten thousand cousins over there. It’ll break the place. There’d be no one left to serve us, because everyone’s going to be at the reception,” Rafe murmured, stroking the small of Quinn’s back. “Actually, babe, that sounds perfect. What the hell. We’ll bring in someone to cover at the pub and tell them to stock up on Guinness before we get there.”
“Yeah, right.” Burying his face into Rafe’s shoulder, Quinn exhaled, relaxed and happy. “I’m just glad you’re here. With me. That’s all I need.”
“Really?” Rafe shifted, putting a bit of space between them, and Quinn blinked, wanting the warm shadows back around him. A bit of gold appeared under Quinn’s nose, a pinch of bright between Rafe’s lovely callused fingers. “We’ve talked about t
his before, but you know, as much as we’ve joked and teased about it, I want to do this with you. Dance with you. Pick the stuff off your grapes. Feed your cat at three in the morning because she’s screaming at me. Let me marry you, Quinn Morgan. I can’t think of any other way I’d like to spend the rest of my life except with you.”
Two! Only Two!
“SHE’S ONLY getting the two,” Forest muttered, digging through his suitcase for the pair of jeans he knew he’d packed in its voluminous interior. “Shit, I didn’t even give birth to them and I feel every single damned stretch mark and worry line a mother’s got. No more. We’re not having any more.”
“Babe, why not?” Connor called out from the depths of their en suite bathroom. His deep voice was muffled, dampened by the heavy Irish rain hitting the slate roof and the cottage’s thick plaster walls, but not so much that Forest didn’t hear the humor in his husband’s voice. “What’s one more?”
“What’s one more? If it’s tiny, then there’s feeding. Around the clock feeding. Did you forget that?” Unable to find the jeans, he began to unpack the whole case onto the bed, then realized halfway through his digging, the clothes in it were about two sizes larger than what he normally wore. “Fuck, these are Con’s. Where the hell is my suitcase?”
A weathered three-bedroom cottage perched on the sloping coast along Dunworley Bay in County Cork probably wasn’t the first place most men thought of when they wanted to get away on their honeymoon, but Forest hadn’t married a typical man. Connor Morgan was as Irish as the wind sweeping up the cliffs outside, teasing out a keening moan from a nearby watch tower ruins’ sentry stands cut through the crumbling stone. The island called to him, a birthplace siren he felt pulling at him even as he built his life in a city halfway around the world from the wild, rolling hills he’d rambled through on long, endless summer days.
Forest felt Connor’s slight inhale when he’d answered “Ireland” to his then-clandestine husband’s query about where they should go after Brigid Morgan dragged them up the aisle to be married in front of God and all He created, then caught the full force of Con’s sweet, sexy smile before he gathered Forest up into a tight hug. No one in the family questioned them taking yet another honeymoon once Con had a long period of free time, and most of them had gone out of their way to smooth over any bumps in their planned getaway. Relatives were called to be gently warned off dropping by the isolated cottage for a visit, and a distant aunt promised to stock up the place for a two-week stay before they got there, including making sure there was enough firewood to hold back the chilly Irish wintery wind when it came up off the sea.
The cottage was owned by someone in the Morgan clan, but Forest had long lost track of the connections from one to another. For all he knew, it was a Finnegan who was hosting them, but he’d learned from the moment Connor Morgan brought him home to meet the family for the first time, both sides were as intertwined and as tight as any bond could be, woven together by Donal and Brigid’s fierce love and devotion to their brood.
They’d left SFO on Christmas Day, worn out from a morning spent opening presents and gulping down mouthfuls of food put in front of them, then fell asleep on the flight over, only to be woken up by a gentle-voiced flight attendant warning them they’d be landing shortly. Stumbling out of the terminal, Forest blindly followed Connor as he maneuvered easily through the rental car stand, then piled everything into a Rover barely big enough to hold Con’s shoulders. A few gray, rainy hours later, Con pulled up in front of the desolate cottage and announced they were home.
A blast of warm air greeted them when Connor opened the front door after a brisk five-minute search among the flower pots for the key, and while Forest was imminently grateful for the heat, he’d been left speechless by the sweet scent of pine coming from the freshly cut and lavishly decorated tree someone in the family set up for them in a corner of the sea-facing living room and the logs set in the fireplace, waiting to be lit by the men who’d come to Ireland to celebrate their marriage.
“Your suitcase is over here,” Con said, padding out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a pair of loose cotton pants so worn thin every line of muscle was visible through the fabric, and Forest instantly spotted his husband wore nothing beneath them. “And what’s a few feedings? It wasn’t so bad. We’ll just have to plan it for a time when you’re not on tour and I can work it to not work night ops for a while. Do you blame Mum? She loves the wee things.”
“Then she can have more of her own,” Forest grumbled back. His mind was a bit upside down, torn from its moorings from jet lag, and while his lust was more than willing to tackle Connor down on the huge feather bed set on the bedroom’s long wall, his body didn’t think he’d have the energy to do more than just curl up against Con’s warm length and fall asleep. Sighing in relief when Connor swung his bag up from the ground and onto the bed, Forest muttered in what he hoped was a conciliatory tone, “I just think we’re good with the two we’ve got. I mean, one for you and one for me. At least at a time. If there’s three, then someone’s left out a bit, right?”
“You’re talking to someone who grew up in a house where there was always a set of free hands,” Connor admitted sheepishly. “How about if we talk about this after you get a shower, and I’ll put some tea on? Auntie Doreen said she’d left us a lot of food, and if I know her, there’s pots of cooked food in the fridge we can just heat up. Probably a good stew thick enough to stick to our ribs if you want it.”
“I’ll take anything I don’t have to chew that hard on,” Forest admitted with a sigh. “I don’t know if I have the energy to do more than gum at a spoonful of mashed potatoes.”
“I could chew it for you first. Like a wee bird.”
“And spit it into my mouth?” He made a disgusted face, scraping his tongue across his teeth at Con. “I love you, but God fucking no.”
The shower felt good. Too damned good. Hot water on his aching body was a mistake. The ease of tightness in Forest’s muscles slipped him too close to the edge of sleepy, and after a few minutes of standing beneath the steaming showerhead to rinse off, he reluctantly shut off the hot water and braced himself for the cold.
“Fuck!” The icy bite stung, and Forest stood there for as long as he could take it… or at least until the shower door was jerked open and his husband grabbed him by the arms to pull him out.
“You daft idiot,” Con scolded, holding a wet, shivering Forest against him. “The water’s well fed—”
“Really? Because it seems fucking hungry as shit to me right now. It ate my skin off,” Forest chattered while Connor wrapped an enormous towel around him. “Can you check the shower? Pretty sure I just froze my dick off. It’s probably on the floor. Maybe they can stitch it back on.”
“God, I love you.” Chuckling, Con began to rub the feeling back into Forest’s skin, and the tingling sensation quickly turned to a prickly heat. “It’s winter. The water comes from a well. Underground. Don’t run it without some hot water if you’re going to shower, okay? Go get some clothes and come out for some tea.”
The living room was still toasty when he finally emerged, swathed in one of Con’s old SFPD sweatshirts and a pair of joggers. Thick wool socks covered his feet, but Forest still wasn’t sure he could feel his toes. He shuffled over to the couch, flopped down next to Connor, and sighed when his husband handed him a steaming mug of what smelled like a bracing black tea with lots of sugar.
The first sip was as heavenly as the beginning of his shower, and the kiss he got immediately after sealed the whole Pearly Gates and angelic choir singing deal for him. Pulling his legs up, he ducked his head when Connor swung his arm over, then snugged up against Con’s side. Another sip of tea and the world slowly steadied, leaving him content.
A bit of cold rolled off the long glass pane overlooking the churning seas beyond, and what little light they had remaining of the day was fleeing quickly, swallowed up by the storm and the creeping dusk. The thick draperies on either side of the w
indow probably would take care of the slight chill, but Forest didn’t mind the nip occasionally reaching him. The storm was too gorgeous to shut away, and Connor loved to watch the rain.
Also, closing the curtains would mean he’d have to get back up, and shifting away from his husband’s heat was the last thing Forest wanted.
It was bad enough he was going to have to lean forward to pick at the salumi, breads, and cheeses Connor brought out from the kitchen for them to snack on. And while his stomach was grumbling a bit, he told it to wait. He’d been hungry before, to the point of pain and desperation; it could wait a little while longer while he fed his soul.
The lightning crackled across the sky for a few minutes; then Connor cleared his throat, heralding the beginning of a cajoling. There were always signs when the brawny Irishman wanted something, mostly from the expressions on his face as he worked through what he was going to say. If Con’s SWAT team could see him mentally doing gymnastics before finding a good way to get his point across, they’d have laughed, not recognizing the hard-core, gruff cop who led them through the doors of Hell every day.
But Forest intimately knew that man, the tenderness hidden beneath the steel and badge. Taking pity on his husband, he finally said, “Spit it out, Con. Just like ripping off a Band-Aid.”
Connor frowned, clearly still uncomfortable with what he’d come up with but caught between a rock and a hard place. Clearing his throat again, he mumbled, “I think we should consider what Mum said. What’s another one when there are so many out there who are in need?”
“Because our lives have gotten a hell of a lot more complicated now that Brigid’s working at that shelter,” Forest pointed out. “We can’t take in every one who catches her heart, Con. We’re the only ones she does this to—”
