Love Him Steady

by E M Lindsey

  “I wasn’t expecting her to. I basically dragged her to hell and back, and trust me when I say that my Deaf family is adept at reading between the signs.” He smirked a little. “I mean, they had to know how she was, though.”

  Theo rubbed his fist in a circle over his chest. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Wilder shrugged. He’d moved past his anger at them for never stepping in—for only offering bare-bones comfort when they were around. It wasn’t their job, even if he would always feel let down, but it was hard to be angry at all now. Not when a different path might have taken him away from Cherry Creek. He didn’t like to imagine his life outside of it—of what he would be doing, and who he would know. He was happy here, really and truly and properly. He wasn’t going to give that up for a second of peace in his childhood.

  “How’s the building coming along?” Theo and Brad were using some of the land the Motels purchased around the lake to have something of their own, but Theo hadn’t talked about it much.

  “Stressful, wonderful. I hate design, and Brad loves it, so he’s taking over most of that. I just…” Theo let out a small sigh, but he looked happy. “I’ll feel better when it’s done, and it’s ours.”

  “Sounds nice,” Wilder said.

  “Deaf joke?” Theo asked.

  Wilder laughed again. “Not this time.” He bit his lip, then stared down at his hands. “It’s nice, you know, having him here? Having someone who speaks my language. It makes me feel like all those bits of home I lost when I walked away have come back.”

  “I’ll be better,” Theo promised. “I’ll practice more.”

  Wilder shook his head. “Just give it to me when I ask for it, okay? I’m…I’m okay in both worlds now. I don’t need her approval. I am who I am. I’m Deaf, and I’m hard of hearing. And I’m in Cherry Creek with people who give a shit about me. I’m not lonely.”

  “I’ll be more, when you need me to,” Theo promised, and Wilder leaned into him. “You love him, right? Like you’re in love with him?”

  Wilder nodded and let his cheek rest against Theo’s shoulder. “I feel like those words aren’t enough, though.”

  Theo chuckled, too soft for Wilder to hear, but he saw the way his smile twitched and the way his shoulders moved with the quiet laughter. “I know that feeling.”

  “And you don’t regret any of it?” Wilder asked after a beat. He had been around for Theo’s grand tumble into love with Brad Motel. He’d been there when he had put space between his old life and new one. He’d plied Theo with wine and comfort whenever he and Brad fought in those early days, when they were trying to find their feet in this new and strange universe that warped their lives into something entirely different.

  And he had been there to watch Theo become the man he was always meant to be and part of that was himself and part of that was being loved by someone like Brad, who embraced all the soft spots and rough edges that made Theo into a whole.

  It wasn’t the same for him and Lorenzo, but that was okay, because Theo and Brad weren’t what he needed. He had too many scars to ignore, and he didn’t want someone who would try. He wanted to be embraced for who he was, as he was—and then leave room for what he would become years down the road.

  He wasn’t sure Lorenzo could give him all of that, but Lorenzo was a man who wanted to try. And that was enough.

  “What are you going to do?” Theo asked.

  Wilder smiled. “I’m going to take him on a date. And I’m going to kiss him at the end of it.”

  “Are you going to walk him to the door,” Theo asked with a small grin.

  Wilder hugged himself around his middle, and he nodded. “And I think I’m going to invite him over to stay.” Theo didn’t ask for how long, but Wilder didn’t need him to. He already knew the answer.

  Wilder felt like a parody, like a comic strip, the way he and Lorenzo were jammed in a tub that wasn’t meant for one grown man, let alone two. Lorenzo’s new apartment was bigger and a little more modern than the rooms he had at Hopewell Manor, but they lacked in the sort of indulgent decadence he knew his lover was used to.

  Lorenzo didn’t seem to mind, though. He was holding Wilder’s arm out with one hand, washing him down with his lathered palm as the goat’s milk soap sat on the edge of the tub. They were sitting up because it was the only way they could squeeze together there, and his knees were knocking against the hard porcelain.

  “I can’t live like this,” Lorenzo muttered after he let Wilder’s arm fall into the water. He sloshed and then grabbed Wilder and pushed him until his back was against the slant, and his legs stretched toward the faucet. He laid his body over him, the water coming dangerously close to the top, and Lorenzo’s knees dug into his sides painfully. “I want to bathe with you.”

  “Then you’re going to have to figure something out,” Wilder said.

  Lorenzo dipped his head in low, nosing along his jaw. They were both hard—had been since they’d gotten to the little house and abandoned all pretense of going out for the date. Lorenzo set up pillows and blankets on the living room floor, and Wilder ordered dinner for delivery from his phone app, and with a fifty-minute wait, Lorenzo suggested the bath.

  It didn’t help the throbbing need between his legs, but it was distracting enough because it felt like hours before they’d be able to crawl into bed and explore those other ways of loving that Lorenzo had promised he wanted. For now, Wilder shifted so his cock brushed against Lorenzo’s stomach, and the pressure had his head spinning a little.

  “You,” Lorenzo groaned against his ear.

  “What about me?”

  Lorenzo pulled back, and he didn’t answer with words, but there was a novel of emotion behind his eyes that didn’t really have language. It was just feeling, and Wilder didn’t need him to try, because he had the same, quiet simmer just behind his ribs. He turned his head and let Lorenzo kiss him until he felt like all the air had been ripped from his lungs.

  “I don’t want to wait for food,” Wilder gasped.

  Lorenzo pushed up to stand, then stepped out and grabbed his robe, throwing it on without drying off. “We don’t have to wait. Someone’s at the door, so I’m going to pay, and you get in the bedroom and wait for me.”

  Wilder hated being ordered around, but he knew it was a request that was tainted with desperation of what was to come. The food could wait—everything could wait—until their other appetites were sated. He slipped a bit on the floor, but he took the time to wipe the remnants of soap from his skin before wrapping a towel around his waist and padding across the hall to where the bed waited.

  It was unmade from that morning, from waking up in Lorenzo’s arms like he was always meant to be there. He was still a little bit wrecked from the funeral, and still in a bit of shock from his own bravery at confronting his past during his father’s funeral. And he knew there was no way backward for him when it came to his family. There was only this, and going forward with the people had had chosen to spend his life with.

  But it felt good, because these people had earned him. They deserved him.

  Especially the man in the next room who was setting up this night to be one quiet moment in an eventual sea of everything. It made Wilder smile as he stripped the towel off, as he laid his back against the cool sheets and spread his legs, waiting with his cock in his hand.

  Lorenzo came in a moment later, stuttering to a halt in the doorway. His chest heaved with breath, though Wilder couldn’t hear it. But he saw the way it moved him, the way his lips parted and nostrils flared like he was using every single one of his senses to drink Wilder in.

  He gave a stroke, felt something soft rumble in the back of his throat. Lorenzo was across the room in seconds, his knees on the bed, his hands parting Wilder’s thighs so wide it strained his tendons—but the pain was so good. It rippled up his spine hand-in-hand with the agonizing pleasure of Lorenzo’s mouth as he dragged open lips up his shaft and then sucked at the head as Wilder’s hand fell away.

  L
orenzo’s nails were blunt, but Wilder could feel the stinging pressure of them as the grazed the sensitive spaces on the insides of his legs. His tongue pressed into his slit, then he pulled back and swirled it around and then sucked him all the way down until Wilder’s hips thrust in a shallow rhythm, desperate for more friction—more heat—more everything.

  “Please.” The word tumbled from his lips in what felt like a jumble of consonants and vowels in an entirely new language that only they spoke. He wanted more—he needed to feel Lorenzo heavy and present against him. His hand moved to Lorenzo’s hair and gripped tight. “Please,” he begged again.

  Lorenzo understood. He cupped Wilder’s balls in his hand, then sucked hard all the way down, a faint graze of teeth on the way back up, and then he did it again. And then again—faster this time and sloppy. He felt his cock throbbing harder, in time with the way Lorenzo sucked him, and Lorenzo’s other hand pressed bruising fingers into his hips, leaving wanted marks on his skin that Wilder could look at every single day for the rest of his life if he was allowed to.

  “I love you.” Those words were rich with a messy newness that sounded like he felt—lost and completely confused and utterly gone for this disaster of a man who loved harder than anyone Wilder had ever known in his life. “I love you so fucking much.”

  And then he came. He had been so busy paying attention to the way his heart was growing and thrashing that he missed the slow burn from his dick to his belly until the heat erupted, and his eyes rolled back in his head. Lorenzo drank him down, his throat constricting around him, making it almost hurt with pleasure as he emptied himself.

  It was freeing, he realized, just like Lorenzo had said. There would be things that would always be too sore and too scarred to touch, but they weren’t limits, they were just new shapes of who he was now that he had tripped into this life and accidentally made himself a home.

  He came down with soft, gasping breaths, and his hands pulled and tugged until Lorenzo was on top of him, then he rolled toward the nightstand as Lorenzo tucked in behind. His dick was hard, the head leaving a trail of precome, and he reached in his nightstand for lube before flicking off the cap and wetting his hand.

  “Wilder?” Lorenzo murmured behind his ear.

  Wilder spread his legs and smeared the inside of his thighs, and behind his balls before he turned his back to look at Lorenzo’s wide eyes. “Like this.”

  “Oh god, yes,” Lorenzo breathed out. His fingers dug into his hip again, in those same, twinging places, and Wilder grinned as he felt Lorenzo’s cock press into his tight space. He squeezed his legs shut, and then his eyes, and he allowed himself to appreciate another first. “God. I…” Lorenzo’s voice stammered to a halt, and then he felt a tentative thrust, like he wasn’t sure.

  But that was okay, because Wilder was sure. There were stumbles, and there were roadblocks, and there were awful and sometimes the best surprises. But he knew himself, and he trusted himself, which was long-fought and hard-won, and he wasn’t going to give up ground to fear.

  He squeezed his thighs as tight as he could, and then he moved with his lover. “Tell me what you want,” he said.

  Lorenzo let out something like a sob, wrapping his arm tight around Wilder’s chest. “I want to fuck your thighs hard. Please…please let me…”

  “Yes. I want it. I need to feel you,” Wilder said.

  Lorenzo held on with a vice-grip, and then his hips slammed against Wilder. He could hear it—he could hear the sound of their skin slapping—a faint, muffled thwack that got his spent cock half-hard all over again and sent zings of a totally different, sated pleasure rippling through him. He let his head fall back and closed his eyes as Lorenzo mouthed at him and nipped at him and bit down as his skin heated and cock swelled. And then he came.

  The white-hot spurts unleashed against his bare skin, and though it wasn’t inside him—it was almost better. It was practically perfect. Lorenzo’s breathing hitched, and his tiny gasps right against the back of Wilder’s ear almost sounded like tears, but the cheek that rubbed against his was dry.

  His heart was still hammering, almost like he’d run a marathon—and in a way, he had. He had been running his entire life, and Cherry Creek, and Indulgence, and Theo, and Lorenzo—they were all his finish line.

  He was home.

  This was all he had ever needed.

  “Love you,” Lorenzo murmured against his ear, and then Wilder smiled.

  Because there was also that.

  Epilogue

  Wilder supposed the storm should have been the indicator that the day wasn’t going to go well. It was unexpected, entirely unpredicted, and knocked out power on the entire block, which ruined a massive batch of cupcakes for a bulk order that was due for pick-up at nine the next morning. The front of the shop flooded from the sudden downpour, and Wilder managed to save only half the paper stock he had stored beneath the front counter.

  His phone was buzzing non-stop, probably from both Theo and Lorenzo checking up on him since they were both out of town helping Brad and Levi pick up supplies for the Levi’s new restaurant, Shalom. Wilder also had his own contribution to the grand opening of Cherry Creek’s new shopping center that weekend, but if he couldn’t get this cupcake batch done now, it was going to set him back hours.

  “Fuck,” he whispered softly to himself, feeling the harsh rush of air against the back of his throat. He’d hit a hearing decline over the last three months, and his audiogram had showed that it was going faster than expected.

  He lost most of the running water, along with the birds. And speaking voices, even with his hearing aids at full volume, mostly just sounded like a dull murmur. But he could still hear the timber of Lorenzo’s voice as he rumbled up against the back of his ear when they were in bed together, and he could feel his voice through rough vibrations against his skin, and he didn’t need anything else besides his long fingers signing and the soft lips drawing deep moans from his core.

  But also, he needed some fucking electricity so he could keep to his schedule.

  The bakery door flung open, and Wilder almost jumped out of his skin when Fitz came tumbling in from the downpour. His t-shirt was plastered to his skin, and his hair had half-fallen from his bun, and water beaded at the ends of his eyelashes as he approached the counter.

  ‘Bad outside,’ he signed, one hand stiff, the other flowing easily.

  Wilder sighed and nodded, his gaze flickering to the window. ‘I have an entire order fucked.’

  Fitz shook his head. ‘You need to close. Sorry. Repair take too long.’

  Wilder wanted to hit something or scream or maybe even cry a little, because he was doing well, but not well enough he could afford to let down clients like this. ‘How long?’

  Fitz’s face dropped. ‘Tonight, maybe. Tomorrow.’

  Wilder groaned and dropped his head, taking a few breaths until Fitz’s tentative hand gripped his shoulder. He didn’t look up right away, instead letting his frustration simmer until he felt like the world was steady again, then he righted himself. ‘Sorry.’

  Fitz shook his head, opened his mouth, then frowned and closed it. Wilder knew that signing was harder for him than most people thanks to his less than responsive fingers—and he knew in an ideal world people would just happily learn for him. But the world wasn’t ideal. Cherry Creek was home—but home was never perfect.

  But a lot of people were trying, and Fitz was one of them.

  ‘Go upstairs, I’ll put sandbags at the door.’ He spelled more than he signed, but it got his point across, and Wilder knew there wasn’t anything left to do but abandon the ruined half-baked batter and then hunker down and wait it out.

  Lightning flashed outside, and he felt the rumble of thunder under his hands, shooting all the way up to his sternum. He looked back at Fitz with wide eyes. ‘Dangerous for you?’

  Fitz waved him off with a laugh. ‘I’m fine. Go.’

  Wilder backed up, then moved to the kitchen to turn out all
the switches and unplug the ovens. He dumped the trays in the bin, then stomped up the stairs, relishing the feeling of the hard wood under his feet in a cathartic expression of his emotions.

  The apartment was dark, but the were skies rich with blackened clouds marring the skyline. The rain was still coming down in sheets like a damn hurricane, and the air was still and humid. He cracked open the window that was farthest from his furniture, and he breathed in the rush of breeze before he went in search of candles.

  When he had a few lit, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and saw Lorenzo’s name on the screen, and he felt suddenly choked up and tired and desperate to feel his arms around him. He was meant to be home soon, but he wasn’t so sure now.

  Lorenzo: The road is washed out pretty bad. How are you doing?

  Wilder: All the power is out, ruined my baking, shop flooded. Fuck my entire life.

  Lorenzo: Babe.

  Wilder: It’s fine. Fitz is putting up sandbags, and I’m upstairs. I miss you.

  Lorenzo: Take a bath, get some rest. It’ll be okay. I love you I love you I love you

  He felt each I love you like a kiss to his battered emotions, and he closed his eyes and pressed the phone to the center of his forehead as he told himself it was just temporary. He could fix it. He’d be up all night baking if he had to once the power was back on.

  Right now, he was powerless, and that wasn’t the end of the world.

  He was grateful that his water heater was entirely gas, and he filled the tub as he lined the sink with candles, and the darkness was suddenly comforting as he eased beneath the hot water and let it surround him. His clothes sat on a pile near the toilet, the phone perched so he could see it if it lit up, and he leaned his head back and let himself miss the sound of the rain for a brief moment.

  Those were the things he shared with Lorenzo and no one else. The quiet mourning of small losses that most people thought they couldn’t live without. There were days he burned for the sound of thunder or for the lyrics to his old favorite songs or even the full-bodied laughter that brightened Lorenzo’s face like the sun. But nothing about that loss made him regret his life. His regret simmered firmly in the opinion of others.