11. MAX
MAX
Lucas slouched through the doorway looking exhausted and downtrodden, his hair dangling in his face and still wearing his uniform rather than the casual clothes he usually changed into before coming home.
It looked like his uniform was stained with something dark that could have been anything from lunch to someone’s brains.
“Rough day?” I asked, looking up at him and sticking a finger in the book to hold my place.
“Ugh.” He lifted his hair off his neck and shook it as if trying to fan himself with it. “The roughest. I desperately need a shower. And then to sleep for three weeks.”
“Oddly specific, but ok.” I gestured at his uniform. “Do you need to throw that right in the wash?”
He looked down at himself as if he’d forgotten what he was wearing.
“Oh. Yeah, probably. My last call ran right into the end of the day, I barely had the energy to shower and change, and then Rufus dropped a cup of coffee in my lap. At least it wasn’t boiling hot, but I still have creamer in my pubes and these pants are done for until I can wash them.. ”
I put down my book and transferred into my wheelchair. “Why don’t I get the shower started for you while you get the washer going? Dinner’s ready and waiting for us whenever you’re ready for it.”
He groaned lasciviously, already stripping off his shirt. “Oh baby, keep talking dirty to me.”
I laughed and tried not to ogle his chest, with moderate levels of success, but when he unbuckled his belt without even glancing at me—it seemed like he might have forgotten I was there—I decided I felt too much like a voyeur and took myself off to the bathroom to turn on the shower.
I heard the washer door clang shut, followed by his footsteps; a moment later, a completely naked Lucas dragged into the bathroom and almost tripped over me because he wasn’t looking down.
“Dude, watch it!” I chided, jerking myself backwards.
I was at eye level with his junk and I couldn’t even enjoy it because he looked too much like something the cat dragged in. No fair.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, stepping aside so I could roll past him and out of the bathroom.
I offered him a reassuring smile. “Don’t fall asleep in here or you’ll drown and miss out on my chili.” What had happened to the guy today that he was such a wreck? I hoped no one had died on his watch. Those days, he’d told me, were always the worst.
I closed the bathroom door behind myself and headed back toward the kitchen.
I gave the chili a stir, inhaling the aroma of the mixed spices which smelled wonderful, if I did say so myself, and considered filling bowls for us but decided to wait because I wasn’t sure how long Lucas would be in the shower.
Since that first day, he always took longer than me—the downside of long hair, he’d told me—but some days it was a ten-minute shower and some days it was nearly thirty.
It seemed to depend on his mood and the temperature outside.
By the time he made his way out of the bathroom in a towel fifteen minutes later, I was settled next to the couch in my chair, reading again and finishing my beer. “Want one?” I called over my shoulder, holding up the bottle toward him.
“Hell yes,” said his retreating voice, followed by the sound of his door closing.
Three minutes later he was back and accepting the beer I’d pulled out of the fridge for him. Wearing only a pair of threadbare pajama pants, he dropped down onto the couch and ran his fingers through his soaking-wet hair. “Fuck, I’m gonna have to blow-dry this.”
I stared at him. “You own a blow-dryer?”
He took a sip of his beer. “Uh, yes? I can’t go to sleep with my hair wet like this; I’d look like a poodle in the morning.”
“How did I not know this about you?”
He shrugged. “Probably because I use it in my bedroom, not out in the middle of the living room.”
I watched as his fingers snagged on a snarl in his hair and couldn’t help but reach out my own hands to gently help him detangle it.
“Do you want dinner first, or to, uh, blow-dry first?” I’d almost just jokingly said blow instead of blow-dry, but decided at the last second that that was a little too forward considering the still-lingering tension between us.
“Dinner,” he decided. “It’ll give my hair a chance to dry a little so I don’t have to work so hard on it.” He flopped back against the couch with a sigh, cradling his beer. “Just want to sit for a minute before we eat. I’m so tired.”
“Wanna talk about it?” I offered tentatively. He didn’t tend to tell me a lot about his shifts; between patient confidentiality and not wanting to gross me out, he kept most of it to himself, or at least between him and his partner. “Did something bad happen?”
He shook his head. “Not particularly. It was just call after call after call, nonstop. The last one was a particular mess—lots of blood and yelling people.”
I winced sympathetically, wondering what kind of asshole would yell at someone who was there to rescue them. And no, my hospital grumping was not the same thing. “That sucks.”
“Yeah.” He sighed and put down his beer, slapping his hands on his thighs to push himself up to a standing position. “Head over to the table; I’ll get the food.”
I grabbed both of our beers, tucked them between my legs, and did as he asked, crossing the living room to the table.
I listened to him clattering around in the kitchen for a few minutes as he fetched and filled bowls, and then he reappeared with a bowl in each hand and a bag of oyster crackers tucked under his arm.
“Smells great,” he told me with a smile as he set everything on the table and sat down across from me.
“I hope it’s good,” I confessed. “I haven’t made it in a long time.” I was really hoping I wasn’t welcoming him home from a tough shift with inedible slop.
As I ate—thankfully, the chili was good—I reflected on the events of the previous night.
Running into Lucas outside the bathroom, our talk, our aborted attempt at hooking up again.
He kept circling back to his worries about pressuring me, and I was running out of ways to tell him that didn’t concern me in the slightest. Maybe it would just take time.
Well, time and more sex. Hopefully the more sex we had without me freaking out on him, the more comfortable he’d get with doing it.
“It is good,” Lucas said, dipping his spoon back into his bowl for another bite.
“Thank you for cooking. I know it’s not your favorite thing, but it makes it so much more pleasant to come home after a shift and have something ready to eat.
” He paused with his spoon halfway to his mouth.
“I don’t mean to make you sound like a housewife,” he added hastily.
“I don’t expect you to be cooking and cleaning for me every day or anything.
Like I’ve been telling you, this is your home, and you don’t owe me anything. ”
The weird thing was, it hadn’t really been bothering me to cook or—more occasionally, I’d admit—clean the apartment.
It gave me something to do, something to focus on.
Probably when I got started on my job–I was waiting for medical sign-off before HR could propose a date–things would slip at least somewhat, but for the moment, I was happy to do these things for both of us.
“It’s no problem, Luc,” I assured him. “I’m doing it because I want to, not because I think I have to.
And,” I said with a sly glance at him, “that goes for everything I do with you.”
He froze with his spoon halfway out of his mouth, coloring slightly. “Good to know,” he finally managed once he got his spoon back into his bowl. “Does that mean you want to…”
I grinned at him. “Hell yeah, I want to. But I think tonight you need to sleep, not stay up ‘til all hours fucking me.”
He licked his lips, eyes dropping to my mouth, and then nodded reluctantly. “Yeah, you’re probably right. Odds are good I’d fall asleep halfway through otherwise, and that’s not exactly the impression I like to give guys I sleep with.” As if to support that, his jaw cracked in a huge yawn.
I hummed my agreement through a mouthful of chili, and we continued eating in companionable silence until our bowls were empty. “Go on,” I told him as I put my spoon back into my bowl. “Go blow-dry and then go to bed. I’ll clean up.”
“You sure you can -” He stopped short as I glared at him.
I didn’t want him to think of me as less capable than him; I wanted him to see me as just-Max, who was able to go about his days without a hitch.
Even if, yes, there occasionally were hitches.
In this case, though, I was perfectly capable of loading some bowls into the dishwasher, which was, unlike most of the kitchen, within my easy reach.
“Ok,” he said, holding up a placating hand.
“I get it.” He drained his beer and stood up.
I softened my glare into a satisfied smile and started gathering the bowls and spoons into my lap.
I’d come back for the beer bottles. Lucas returned my smile and started down the hallway; by the time he turned into his room, he was halfway through dropping his pants and I could see his boxer briefs-covered ass.
“Nice,” I mumbled to myself, and rolled into the kitchen.
I’d watch another few episodes of Natural Detective and then head to bed myself to finish my book.
***
Four hours later, I headed down the hall toward my room.
I was surprised to see Lucas’s bedroom door standing open; we both tended to sleep with them shut, both for privacy and for noise isolation.
Wondering if anything was wrong, I popped my head through the door and scanned the Lucas-shaped lump on the bed.
Nothing seemed amiss, so I started to back away to go to my own bed but accidentally ran into the door frame.
My chair made a loud scraping noise, and I glanced guiltily at Lucas, hoping I hadn’t woken him up.