Take It Outside (Trailhead #1)

21. Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-One

Beau

A drian and I enjoy our sex and waffles—and seconds of both—before he leaves in the morning. He doesn’t take the wedding band with him, but I know it’s still on his mind.

Given everything we talked about, a conversation that far outlasted our time on the couch, I have to believe in the we and the us and the together of it all, but there’s no question that I’d always rather be with him than without, and I’m not sure how long I’ll need to wait before we discuss that . It has nothing to do with Adrian’s big career decisions, except for the ways it does, but I’m not sure he’s ready to hear it, and I haven’t loved him long enough to be ready to hear him say goodbye.

Loved him .

Love .

Fuck.

I’m not unpacking the rest of that right now, focused on work as much as I can be when it doesn’t demand anything terribly intense from me. Over the years, I’ve thought once or twice about trying to build my own clientele and run a private business, but I’m not dumb enough to miss the difference between me making a basic pros and cons list, and Adrian being passionate about something he deserves to make more real than a dream. I want him to have this, and I know any help I’d offer would lack important experience and probably tip dangerously toward selfishness at times, so I’m staying a few steps back.

It’s been a few days since Adrian spent the night, and today he’s having lunch with Mason Burnett.

It would be easy for an outsider to predict a wave of jealousy, but I’m not sure I’ve ever been built like that, happy to give Adrian shit about being out with another man but feeling absolutely no resentment about it. Mason will be able to advise Adrian in ways I can’t, for at least a couple of different reasons, and if I’m ever going to speak up about the other things on my mind, I need to keep my mouth shut for now.

Except for when I text Adrian that night.

Things go ok today?

With Mason? Yeah actually. He showed me a lot of his own numbers. Weho might work eventually

My heart pounds, already proud of Adrian for getting this far with it. And I might as well say so.

Proud of you

Haven’t done anything yet. But thank yo u

Your shoots go ok too?

Mostly. Ran a little long and then got stuck behind all of California on the 5. Still at my studio

Gonna be there a while?

Probably

I start and stop a couple of responses, backspacing until I’m staring at nothing again. I want to ask if he’s decided about the studio yet, but I also remind myself I’m not supposed to push at all. He’s not hiding anything. He’ll tell me when he’s ready, and I keep my response simple instead.

Miss you

Miss you too. And I think I want you to come here

To the studio? Tonight?

Yes to the studio, no not tonight. Soon though

Nodding is pointless when he can’t see me, but I do it anyway. Just say when and I’ll be there

I know you will

We say goodnight then and go another couple of days without making concrete plans, Adrian taking on extra work to make extra money, while I take on extra work to kill extra time. I’m restless, and I think he is too, and it feels important when we finally agree on a night for me to visit his studio. Whether I’ll be there to get used to a place he’s keeping or to say goodbye to something he’ll leave behind, I have no idea, but I’m grateful for the chance to tether myself to one reality or another.

Adrian mentions something about making sure I don’t dress too lightly, and while I remember the night—right after his birthday and before fajitas and tequila—when he was freezing in his studio, I only sort of laugh to myself before I agree. Beyond that, it’ll just be us, so I opt for comfortably tight jeans and my softest t-shirt and a zip-up hoodie, trading my cowboy boots for sneakers and leaving my hair messy in a way that will always look better on him. I’d rather wear nothing, but maybe I can convince Adrian to come home with me for some of that later.

I have the address of his studio space, and it’s not difficult to find, the sun still up for another hour or so, and the signs easy enough to read from afar. The building itself is old and unimpressive, but I don’t think it matters when everything I want to see waits inside, and I climb the stairs to the fourth floor because I can. My knock is answered quickly, and it’s the first I consider he might be nervous about something.

It makes my own stomach flip.

“Hey,” he says, his fingers curled around my hoodie as he pulls me through the door. We don’t go far, Adrian only reaching behind me to lock up before I land against the door and he presses his forehead to mine. “Thank you for being here.”

We stay there for a long time, my hands at his hips and his fingers light against my chest while we breathe the same air. I move, or he does, but I think we both just need to be closer to each other somehow, even if we still haven’t kissed hello. I’m curious about so many things, but all of it can wait as long as Adrian will keep me here, with him.

Or anywhere else.

With him.

“Care to show me around? ”

It’s probably a funny thing to say in such a small space—I could look over his shoulder and see everything just fine—but Adrian doesn’t laugh, his lip caught between his teeth when he meets my eyes and nods.

“I do, actually.”

He takes my hand and introduces me to the things he’s packed into the room. His desk with a computer and two monitors and an extra laptop I’ve seen more than once. The large photo printer I’m certain I’d break if I got too close. Boxes and piles of supplies that are as organized as anything can be. Frames. Ink. Canvas paper. A few different cameras.

It’s his world and, for now, I’m just living in it.

“Am I allowed to ask questions?” I murmur, careful not to disrupt something that seems fragile.

Adrian sighs. “You’re always allowed to ask questions. That was never—I want us to do this together, and I thought you understood that after the other night.”

“I understood that you— fuck , I just don’t want to hurt you.”

“Okay, first of all, you’re going to hurt me. You’re going to hurt me, and I’m going to hurt you, and it’ll all suck sometimes.”

“Hell of an opening,” I growl.

“Oh, fuck off. You’re a big boy. You know all that already,” Adrian bites back. “But second, my entire point the other night was that while I need to make decisions for me, I want to make those decisions with you. Levi once told me to bail on the suit and tie and take pictures instead. Years later, a friend of his helped get him a job out here. Two big moments with a slice of agency and the rest of our time together was spent—” He lets go of me to rub both hands over his face, and I don’t move away mostly because there’s nowhere for me to go. “Levi and I were lovers, and friends, but we let life happen to us, and I don’t know how much of that could’ve been better if we’d figured out how to be partners, too.”

I release a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding, taking a moment to mourn Levi now in a way I didn’t think I was supposed to on the night Darren told me he’d died. Adrian’s eyes fall closed, like he needs a moment of his own, and it’s only the unholy sound coming from my stomach that startles a laugh out of both of us before any tears can fall.

“Sorry, you, um—you mentioned something about dinner, so I haven’t eaten in a while.”

“Guess it’s a good thing I brought it with me then.”

“Here?” I ask, glancing around again.

“Yes,” he answers. “Or no, but yes. Sort of. Come with me.”

It’s unnecessary, a command like that, but I’m too busy trying to piece together the rest of what he’s said to stop and point it out. Adrian slings a camera around his neck and moves toward a closet now, one I hadn’t even noticed until he reaches for the handle, and I’m only more confused when there’s a ladder inside.

But I follow him up.

The ladder brings us to the rooftop.

“I actually got a deal on this lease, because someone screwed up when they split the top floor into separate spaces. The closet was supposed to be in a hallway or something, accessible for building maintenance, and I still need to allow access to them on demand. So, since my private studio isn’t fully private, they cut the rent a bit.”

“How often do they actually need to get up there?”

“Not very.”

“But you can enjoy this view whenever you want it.”

Adrian smiles that carefully quiet smile. “I’ll miss it when the lease is up.”

I let that slide, only because I get distracted by everything he’s set up for us tonight, a couple of cushioned lounge chairs inviting us to relax, and the table of food between them inviting us to enjoy our dinner while we do. It’s almost a picnic, really—sandwiches and fruit and lemonade—a grassy park traded for a concrete rooftop in a way I’d like to remember forever. There’s a huge umbrella too, and I imagine it’s to help shield the patio furniture from the elements as much as for our comfort while the sun continues to set.

“And the rooftop came furnished, too?”

“It did,” he says. “A previous tenant must’ve assembled it up here once upon a time, then figured it wasn’t gonna make it back down. All I had to do was clean it up a bit.”

“Is that what you’re doin’ with me, too? Cleaning me up a bit?”

Adrian huffs. “Don’t think either of us really wants that, do we?”

I pull him in for a rough and sloppy kiss, just to prove his point, and we’re both a little breathless when I finally back away to lower myself onto a lounge chair, sitting sideways on it as I face the table and pop a piece of pineapple into my mouth .

“Quite the culinary decision here,” I tease.

He helps himself to a bite of his own in response but doesn’t sit down right away, taking his camera closer to the edge of the rooftop and aiming west. I’ll have to ask him to show me the pictures some other time because I’m far too interested in watching him to care what the sky looks like tonight. It crosses my mind that this might be an exception to Adrian’s interest in capturing moments most others overlook, but then I wonder if maybe he’s focused on the peeling facade of a nearby home or a baby bird taking its first flight while painted by a dozen shades of orange and yellow.

I’m also not going to interrupt him to ask.

Eventually, he returns to sit across from me, our legs tangling naturally beneath the table when he begins to eat. We haven’t talked much since we’ve been up here, but it doesn’t seem to bother either of us, and at least a few minutes pass in relative silence before he catches my eye and doesn’t blink.

“So. My lunch with Mason.”

“Mmmhmm.”

“I think I’m going to plan—tentatively—for WeHo,” he says. “I mean, I could start somewhere less notable, but if I’m going to do this at all, I think I’d rather aim high, and I’ll still keep an eye on everything else, but it’s less of a commute, and if Mason and I are going to cross-promote at all—”

“WeHo makes perfect sense,” I finish.

“It will, after a while.”

I take a huge bite of my sandwich to help delay my response, or maybe knock it from my throat altogether, but Adrian seems to know I have things to say, and he’s willing to wait. I swallow and start something I won’t be able to take back in another few minutes.

“If you could afford to make the move now, would you?”

“Yes,” Adrian answers quickly. Honestly. “But we’ve covered this. Paying two rents already has me maxed out, so the best I can do is let this place go, take on extra photoshoots, and work from home for a while until I’ve saved up enough to afford the higher cost of a prime location.”

“And what if you didn’t have two rents anymore?”

“That’s what I just said. I’ll drop this place and only pay rent for my house.”

“What if you drop the house instead?”

Adrian frowns, confused more than anything. “Renting a storefront with an attached apartment would cost a lot more and save me nothing. Just the additional square footage alone—”

“No, I—” God, I just want to kiss him until he gets it, but we have to use words and I’m worried that they’ll keep coming out all wrong. He’s beautiful and I want to be frustrated by him every day of my life, but maybe he’s finally putting together the pieces of what I’m saying, his eyes very, very slowly going wide as I continue. “What if you move into my apartment?”

“Your apartment,” he rasps.

“I’m making those payments just fine on my own, so you’d be able to put everything toward WeHo, and any extra money you make between now and then will help with revamping the space and generally transitioning to retail.”

Something in Adrian’s expression hardens. “Is this a—it all sounds very businesslike, and I don’t—I’m not sure that’s what I want.”

“You don’t want to move in with me at all?” I ask. “Or you don’t want to move in with me because I just made it sound like part of the math equation we were trying to solve?”

“I don’t want to do math with you, Beau.”

I push myself off my lounge chair, standing to drag the table full of food away from where it separates us, our cups close enough to empty that there’s little risk of spilling as long as I'm careful about it. Adrian studies me, but I don’t want him to have to do that either, so I sit next to him as soon as I can and take his face in my hands, kissing him without reservation and hoping it answers a couple of unspoken questions.

Pulling away from him aches, but brushing my thumb over his lips helps. “It’s not business, love. I want you to live with me. If you decide to keep this studio and take pictures of sappy weddings forever, I’ll still want you to live with me. Hell, if you put on a fancy suit and start working in an office again, I’ll be the one to drag you through the door by your tie every night. Our door, of our apartment.”

Adrian’s mouth covers mine before that soft t is fully off my tongue, and the line between needy and tender is blurred when I open for him, and he helps himself to everything that’s been his all along. I’m in no hurry for anything else, and it takes a long time for us to stop for more than a breath, but when he falls to my neck and nudges my hoodie aside to make room for himself there, I finally chuckle.

“Is that a yes to moving in with me?”

He bites me and I love how familiar it is. “It’s not a no, but it’s not—I don’t know. And I don’t want to think anymore.”

It’s honest, and it stings more than the mark he must’ve left with his teeth, but I’m grateful for it, too. Adrian kisses me again before I consider thanking him for the truth or the pain, and then he’s tugging at my sleeves and pushing the hoodie over my shoulders. For all his insistence that I dress warm enough for his surprise dinner, I’m happy to let him undress me now, and in the next minute or two, my t-shirt is on the ground somewhere, and his wicked tongue tempts mine until we’re eager for new sins. I clumsily kick at my sneakers as his body presses against mine, no choice left but to lie down on the lounge chair someone built for us, my legs open to give him room to grind against me.

I’m not convinced I need more than whatever this is, especially once he’s slowed it down to something almost lazy—and my fingertips are drawing imperfect lines up and down his back—but then Adrian’s mouth leaves mine and I struggle to keep from demanding his return. The tip of his nose teases my jawline, then he pauses at my neck briefly, nuzzling me there and promising something he won’t say. Then he stretches my arms above my head and kisses the sensitive skin there, and I’m pretty sure I can hear him smile when my hips arch off the chair without my permission.

“Shut up. ”

He hums, his lips against the Latin hope I made permanent long ago. “I’m really not the big talker here.”

It’s true, and I let him go on, his mouth sliding from my tattoo to my collarbone before his tongue finds one nipple, then the other, then back again. I react to everything, my body confessing things Adrian and I have known for a while now, and when he bites me here and there, I hear it from him, too. Adrian’s pace is torturous, but I love it, and by the time he’s kissing a hundred different spots on my stomach, an extra moment or two spent along my happy trail, I’m in danger of saying so. I feel the button on my jeans slip free, but my zipper barely moves before Adrian’s weight is gone for seconds that last too long.

Then he’s back with his camera.

“Don’t move,” he murmurs.

“I wouldn’t dare.”

There’s really not much to see from where he positions himself near my feet, except that I can feel the steady ache in my cock where it strains against the two layers of fabric keeping it from Adrian’s touch, and I wonder where the lights and shadows land against it. I’m also a little curious whether there’s a limit to the pictures I’d let him take of me, but right now I can’t imagine there is. I don’t want there to be.

Adrian might be thinking about something similar, one practiced hand on his camera while the other reaches for my zipper again, easing it down while he takes pictures of the progress he makes. His thumb arcs over me, the pressure far from the kind I need, but maybe we’re creating something special for him to hang on a wall, and I keep my mouth shut until he’s finally ready to kiss me again.

The camera is gone for now, or maybe my tongue will be on display too, though Adrian’s mouth is too warm for me to care much either way. He’s still fully dressed, and maybe I care a little about that, but he slips away before I can do anything to change it, my jeans a fun challenge for him on the way down. My socks get caught somewhere and end up in the same pile, and when Adrian crawls over me to tease my cock through my boxer briefs, I wonder why they’re still there.

And maybe I wonder out loud, or maybe so many of his thoughts match mine.

“Is it okay if I get you naked up here?”

I glance up at the rising moon that’s seen too much for me to worry about it now. “I think I’d prefer it if you were naked too, but I’m hardly in a position to demand it.”

“I don’t know about that,” Adrian smiles softly. “I’m hardly in a position to say no.”

He stands and I miss him, but then his shirt drops near mine. Everything else follows. Adrian’s efficient about it, but it’s still sexy as hell, the darkness that’s fallen since we arrived playing with his body in a way that makes me want to claim it as mine, even if I think it’s about to be the other way around. Bare now, he returns to drag my boxer briefs away, his mouth around my cock before the cool night air can take its turn. There are jokes to make about an after-dinner drink, but I groan instead, the relief indescribable .

“You’re beautiful,” I say.

My own words remind me of a night in the Trailhead parking lot when I wasn’t sure we’d make it back to being tentative friends again, and whatever we have between us now, I don’t think either of us was lying back then. Still, when Adrian pulls away to chuckle, I’m glad we’ve become more honest.

“You’re just saying that because your dick is in my mouth.”

“Am not. You’re beautiful when your dick’s in my mouth, too.”

Without warning, he takes me to the back of his throat, and the sound I make comes dangerously close to attracting the attention of several neighboring businesses. Adrian’s almost unfairly good at this, easing up to suck at the head while he twists one hand in the wetness he left behind, his other hand strong at my hip to hold me still. I comb my fingers through his hair because, while I’m sure I could break free to fuck his mouth, I’m not looking for a fight up here, and he hums his appreciation when he slides his lips over me again and again.

I’m mostly speechless now, though I have the passing thought that Adrian didn’t actually need to be naked for this. I appreciate his commitment regardless, and groan again when I imagine the precum allowed to drip freely from his cock while he’s intent on tasting mine, already eager to return the favor once he’s made me come. He slows then, like maybe he’s not in a rush to get to any of it, the tip of his tongue tracing my vein until I shiver—once, twice—and he takes enough pity on me to give me more of the pressure I want for another minute or two.

When he moves up my body again, I can’t quite complain about the way I ache, Adrian rocking against me while we kiss, and I find the slightest hint of myself on his tongue before he has something to say.

“Any hard limits?”

“Don’t throw me off the roof.”

Adrian snorts and ducks into the curve of my neck. “I’m serious. I want to fuck you.”

“I’m serious, too. How much of a boy scout were you today?”

“Enough that I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Glad to hear it,” I tell him, turning so I can find his mouth and kiss him for a very long time.

He stops and lets my beard tickle his lips. “So, no lube would’ve been your actual limit?”

“Nah. Could’ve found a creative solution for that.”

I’m almost positive he rolls his eyes, even if I can’t see it, and then he’s reaching into the bag that I assume he used to bring dinner up here. While he digs for the bottle, my hands are everywhere they can be, and I do what I can to rid Adrian of the goosebumps covering his skin, even if we both know they’ll be gone soon, or replaced by a different kind. Then he’s kissing his way down my body again, careful when he moves to straddle the lounge chair and spread my legs until they’re draped over his thighs.

He stares at me for a long time, the range of emotions on his face likely impossible to read even if I weren’t close to writhing with impatience, a plea on the tip of my tongue.

Something else lies there too, but I swallow it whole .

And just like that, whatever I couldn’t read just a moment ago becomes a little clearer in my silence. As quiet as I can be with Adrian, he seems bothered by it now—or at least curious enough to want to go in search of my secrets if it wouldn’t give a few of his own away. The things I won’t confess won’t be given a voice by him either.

I’m pretty sure he wants to find his answer to another question first, and there’s only so much he can bite back at once.

So, for now, he scrapes his short fingernails down the inside of my thighs, seemingly pleased when I relax that much more, my legs falling that much further apart. He licks his lips and I think he’s considering putting his mouth on me again—anywhere and everywhere he can reach—but I watch him pop the cap on a small bottle he must’ve packed hours ago, my body made dangerously needy by the thought. I begin to stroke myself, almost graceful about each up and down like I don’t need it to lead anywhere, but I think Adrian and I both know better.

I do, and it will.