Dinner’s great conversational drought had been broken only by a rainstorm of some kind of drama upstairs. When they’d heard shouting, they’d both put their forks down and run into the foyer, but Rhage had looked over the balcony and shaken his head, telling them to stay out of it.
Which was cool. The two of them had plenty of their own shit to deal with.
When they got to the door that led into the office closet, Qhuinn punched 1914 into the security pad so Blay could see the numbers.
“Year the house was built, evidently.” As they stepped through the closet and came out next to the desk, he shook his head. “I always wondered how they got here.”
Blay made a noise that could have been anything from “Me, too,” to “Fuck you with a chain saw, you rat bastard.”
The route to the PT suite didn’t require a leader, and once they got into the gym, it was hard not to count the yards Blay put between them as soon as he could.
“You can go now,” Blay said as they came up to the door marked EQUIPMENT ROOM/PT. “I’ll manage the cut on my back.”
“It’s between your shoulder blades.”
Blay gripped the knob and went again with the noise in the back of his throat. And this time it was definitely not a me-too kind of thing.
“Be reasonable,” Qhuinn said.
Blay’s eyes stared straight ahead. After a moment, he opened the door. “Wash your hands first. Before you touch me, I want you to wash your hands.”
As they went in, the guy made a beeline for the gurney that Qhuinn had been operated on the night before last.
“We should get a time-share on this bitch,” Qhuinn said as he glanced around the tiled room with its stainless-steel cabinets and medical equipment.
Blay popped himself up on the table, shrugged out of his shirt, and winced as he looked down at the barely closed bleeders on his chest. “Shit.”
Qhuinn let out all the breath in his lungs and just stared at his friend. The guy’s head hung off his neck as he examined where he’d been cut, and he was beautiful like that, his shoulders wide, the pads of his pecs thick, his arms corded with muscle. What made him all the more appealing, though, was his self-contained reserve.
Hard not to wonder what was underneath all that modesty. Qhuinn got on with the nurse shit, grabbing some gauze, tape, and antiseptic wash from the cabinets, then putting it all on a push tray and scooting the lot over to the gurney.
With the supplies gathered, he went over to the stainless-steel sink and pressed the foot pedal to get the water running.
While he washed his hands, he said quietly, “If I could, I would.”
“Excuse me?”
Qhuinn pumped some suds into his palms and scrubbed all the way up his forearms. Which was overkill, but if Blay wanted him superclean, then that was what he was going to be. “If I could love a guy like that, it would be you.”
“Yeah, on second thought, I’ll work on myself and to hell with my back-”
“I’m serious.” He released the pedal to stop the water running, and shook his hands over the sink. “You think I haven’t thought about it? Being with you, that is. And not just for the sex shit.”
“You have?” Blay whispered above the dripping.
Qhuinn dried his hands on a stack of blue surgical towels to the left and took one with him as he went over to Blay. “Yeah, I have. Hold this under the wounds, would you?”
Blay did as he was told, and Qhuinn squeezed some wash over the gash on the guy’s sternum.
“I didn’t know- Motherfucker!”
“Stings, huh.” Qhuinn went around the table, to his buddy ’s back. “I’m going to do this one now, and I think you’d better brace yourself. It’s even deeper.”
Qhuinn put another towel under the wound and hit it with shit that smelled like Lysol. As Blay hissed, he winced. “It’ll be over in a second.”
“Bet you say that to all the-” Blay stopped right there.
“Nah. I don’t say that to anyone. They take me as I come. They can’t handle it, it’s their problem.”
Picking up a sterile pack of gauze, Qhuinn tore the thing open and pressed the white weave against the wound between Blay’s shoulder blades. “I’ve absolutely thought about us… but I see myself with a female long-term. I can’t explain it. It’s just the way it’s going to be.”
Blay’s rib cage expanded and compressed. “Maybe because you don’t want another defect?”
Qhuinn frowned. “No.”
“You sure about that.”
“Look, if I cared what people thought, do you think I’d do what I do already?” He went around and blotted the slice on Blay’s chest, then tended to the wound on his shoulder. “Besides, my family’s dead. Who’ve I got to impress anymore?”
“Why were you so cruel?” Blay asked in a dignified voice. “Back in the tunnel at my place.”
Qhuinn picked up a tube of neomycin and went around to his buddy’s back again. “I was pretty sure I wasn’t coming back, and I didn’t want you ruining your life over me. Figured it was better for you to hate me than miss me.”
Blay laughed for real, and the sound was nice. “You are so arrogant.”
“Duh. But it’s true, isn’t it.” Qhuinn smoothed the milky ointment onto the break in Blay’s skin. “You would have.”
As he came back around in front, Blay lifted his head and his eyes. Their stares met, and Qhuinn reached out and put his palm on his friend’s cheek.
Rubbing his thumb gently back and forth, he whispered, “I want you with someone who’s going to be worthy of you.
Treat you right. Be only with you. I’m not that guy. Even if I settled with a female… shit, I tell myself I could be with just her, but in my heart of hearts, I don’t really believe that.”
The yearning in the blue eyes staring up at him broke his heart. It totally did. And he couldn’t imagine what it was that Blay saw in him that made him so special.
“What is wrong with you,” he whispered, “that you care so much about me?”
Blay’s sad smile added about a million years to his age, lining his face with the kind of knowledge that came only after life kicked you in the nuts a number of times. “What is wrong with you that you can’t see why I would?”
“We’re going to have to agree to disagree on that.”
“Promise me something?”
“Anything.”
“Leave me if you want, but don’t do it for my own good. I’m not a child, and I don’t break easily, and what I feel is none of your goddamned business.”
“I thought I was doing the right thing.”
“You weren’t. So promise me?”
Qhuinn exhaled hard. “Fine, I promise. As long as you swear you’ll look for someone real, okay?”
“You’re real to me.”
“Swear to it. Or I’m going to do that I-am-an-island bit again. I want you open to meeting someone you can really have.”
Blay’s hand crept up Qhuinn’s forearm and squeezed his wrist, the pact becoming solid on both sides. “Okay… all right. But it’s going to be a guy. I’ve tried females, and it just doesn’t feel right.”
“As long as you’re happy. Whatever makes you happy.”
As the tension eased between them, Qhuinn wrapped his arms around his friend and held him close, trying to absorb the male’s sadness, wishing there were another way for them.
“I suppose this is for the best,” Blay said into his shoulder. “You can’t cook.”
“See? I’m so not Prince Charming.”
Qhuinn could have sworn Blay whispered, “Yes, you are,” but he wasn’t sure.
They pulled apart, looked into each other’s eyes… and something shifted. In the silence of the whole training center, in the vast privacy of the moment, something changed.
“Just once,” Blay said softly. “Do it just once. So I’ll know what it’s like.”
Qhuinn started to shake his head. “No… I don’t think-”
“Yes.”
After a moment, Qhuinn slid both his hands up Blay’s thick neck and captured the male’s sturdy jaw in his palms. “You sure?”