Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
FALLON
There were a thousand ways he expected to spend his first night in his new apartment. He imagined sitting on his new couch, wrapped in two of his weighted blankets, eating chicken tenders with ranch and buffalo, and binge-watching true crime documentaries on his streaming account.
He imagined maybe even crawling into his bed, curling up in his nest, and sleeping without interruption until the morning.
Hell, he even thought maybe he’d meet a neighbor and be able to practice his small talk without fumbling over himself. That would have been a miracle, but still.
None of that happened.
Instead, his power went out. He thought it was a fuse, so he called Frankie to walk him through finding where the box was, but none of the switches were flipped. Then he thought it was a building-wide thing, but no. All the other units had their power.
In the end, it was a system issue with the power company. They didn’t process his deposit, which meant at 7:00 p.m., his power was shut off, and it wouldn’t be on until they could correct the account error in the morning.
And just as he was accepting that he was going to spend the night in the dark, praying his phone and laptop didn’t die before morning, someone opened his front door and tried to kill him.
Which, in the end, turned out not to be the case.
It wasn’t just someone. And they weren’t trying to kill him.
But since his eyesight was shit on a good day, and tragically awful in the dark, he hadn’t realized the intruder was Gage. So he did the only thing he could do to stop himself from getting murdered, and he reached into the nearest box for some kind of weapon.
He hadn’t even realized what he was bludgeoning Gage with until suddenly, the lights all went on with an obnoxious hum, and he looked at his hand to see it was holding his largest dildo that normally went inside his least favorite strap-on.
It was a very bright TARDIS blue with lots of veins, and it weighed at least two pounds, which meant it had to hurt.
Shit.
It might have actually concussed him.
Fallon tossed the dildo across the room and dropped to his knees, grasping at Gage’s front. He pulled him close as Gage’s eyes began to focus, and they blinked at each other.
Then Fallon burst into laughter. And a breath after that, he burst into tears.
Gage only took a second to react, grasping Fallon and tugging him into a hug. The chaos of what happened—the fear, the adrenaline, the realization—was crashing around in his chest. For a moment, he thought he might start screaming, but if he did that, he’d never stop.
So he let himself cry instead.
“I kind of feel like you should be comforting me after trying to kill me with a dick, but…”
Fallon cried harder.
“I’m sorry. Shit, I’m so sorry.” Gage squeezed until Fallon felt like he could breathe, and then he wriggled back to look up at Gage’s face.
He hadn’t seen him for three months. “I was just making a joke. It’s okay.
I’m okay. Hey,” Gage said. He reached up and thumbed a few tears off Fallon’s cheeks.
“I don’t normally cry like this. It happens when I get overwhelmed,” he explained.
Gage smiled. His eyes also looked normal, which meant he probably wasn’t concussed, but there was a bruise over his eyebrow that was spreading downward, which might mean a black eye. Oh, fuck. His dildo had given Gage a black eye?
“Can I ask you a question?”
Fallon blinked. “Um. Yes.”
“What are you doing in my neighbor’s apartment?”
For a second, the world swam. What did he mean his neighbor’s apartment? Did that…oh God, could that mean…
His chin shook, and he forced himself to stay calm, though he was going to pay for that later. “You live next door?” Oh my God, Gage was his neighbor? He couldn’t process that.
“Yes. And I just need to know if you were robbing this place. I can’t let you steal, but I can help you if you need it.”
God, he was such a good guy.
Fallon took a deep breath and shook his head. “I live here.”
“Bullshit.”
Fallon’s brows dipped, and he sat back away from Gage. “That’s mean. I wouldn’t lie.”
“I…I know. I’m sorry. But bullshit,” Gage said again. He rubbed at his eye, winced, then carefully stood up as Fallon followed. “Lucas would have told me you were my neighbor.”
“Lucas doesn’t know where I live,” he said, his voice thready.
“I mean, okay, but Frankie knows where I live, and he would have said something,” Gage pointed out.
Fallon felt something like guilt and shame ripping through him. He bit his lip, then swallowed thickly. “Frankie doesn’t know either. I haven’t seen him in a while.”
Gage blinked, his expression full of shock. “What? Why?”
“I have stuff,” Fallon said, waving his hand. “A lot of, uh, stuff going on. I needed some space, and Frankie is too much.”
He could tell Gage wasn’t buying it, but it wasn’t a lie.
Not exactly. He did have stuff, and he did need to keep Frankie away from him for a while.
Just until he figured out what the fuck he was going to do because he was in trouble.
The big, emotional, scary kind of trouble that his brothers would only make worse.
So he asked them to respect his boundaries, and they were trying, but he knew it was killing them too. And he didn’t love himself very much in that moment for knowing the pain he was causing his family, but he didn’t have a choice.
It was all too much. He was barely dealing with what happened. It was a reality that hadn’t quite set in yet.
But in that moment, he had never been more grateful to see Gage. Even if he’d nearly brained him to death with a dildo.
“Fallon,” Gage said quietly, “why were you stumbling around with the lights off?”
“Oh.” He bowed his head and fought off the urge to cry again. He let out the smallest sniff. “The power company didn’t process my deposit. They said it wouldn’t be on until morning. But—” He waved his hand weakly. “—I guess they were wrong?”
Gage rubbed at his temples as Fallon looked over at him. “Have you eaten?”
Fallon’s stomach took that moment to rumble. Loudly. He flushed. “A while ago.”
Gage rolled his eyes, climbed to his feet, then seized Fallon’s hand and tugged him toward the door.
The other thing Fallon hadn’t expected that night was to be wrapped up in a heavy quilt on the couch that Gage had fucked his brains out on. He couldn’t help but be hyperaware of it. It also didn’t help that lately, his hormones were firing on all cylinders.
He took a shaking breath as Gage set a bag full of Greek food in front of him, and he tried not to recoil. He’d developed ARFID as a toddler and had worked through a lot of his fear foods, but he still wasn’t able to just eat anything from anywhere.
“Chicken tenders,” Gage said, digging through the bag. He found a Styrofoam box. “Fries, no seasoning. Ranch. There’s also hummus and tzatziki.”
Fallon blinked at him, then swallowed heavily. “How’d you know?”
“Lucas. He said you were chicken tender besties.”
Fallon was normally embarrassed by his small palate, but Gage made him feel so…normal. He hated that word, but it was the only one that fit right then. He tried not to cry again—fuck, he hated this. He hated what was happening to him so damn often.
“So, I’m not going to ask you to talk to me about why you cut off your family. That’s your business. But if you want to tell me—”
Fallon shoved a chicken tender into his mouth and chewed. The truth of the matter was, he did want to tell him. He wanted to tell someone—anyone. He hadn’t even said it aloud to himself yet, and the thought of saying the words made him break out into a cold sweat.
There were things that were never supposed to happen to him.
Not ever.
And then Charlie had shown up on his doorstep less than an hour after he’d washed the scent of Gage off his skin, and everything changed. One decision—one mistake—and now he was in decision-making hell.
“The night we—ah…” He cleared his throat and gestured between the two of them.
Gage nodded, reaching for his ice water, and pressed it to his eye, which—yeah. It was turning black. Shit. “Right. I remember.”
Fallon flushed and glanced away. “After you dropped me off, Charlie was at my door.”
Gage straightened. “Your ex?”
“Mm. We…talked. And he made me a drink. Then another.”
Gage started to go pale. “Fallon…”
“We, ah…we talked. Then we did other things.” He took a breath.
“I’m pregnant. I…fuck.” The words felt like razors against the back of his throat.
The truth of it was, he wasn’t opposed to the idea of having kids.
He’d just never been certain he wanted it.
Frankie had offered to pay for surgeries to make sure it never happened, but Fallon hadn’t wanted to make that permanent decision yet.
He wasn’t ready.
He wasn’t quite thirty yet. He was still supposed to have time.
Gage cleared his throat. “Uh. Not to sound like an insensitive prick, but…how? Aren’t you on HRT?”
“Testosterone makes it difficult, but not impossible,” he muttered into the tense silence that had fallen in the room.
He fiddled with the side of the chicken tenders box.
“I found out last month. I was really sick, and I felt…weird. Like I was anemic or something. I kept getting out of breath whenever I tried to brush my hair or put dishes away.”
Gage swallowed heavily. “Okay.”
“I took a test. Well, I took four tests to be sure. I haven’t seen a doctor. No one knows.” Fallon’s voice cracked, and he took in a shaking breath. “I don’t want Charlie to know.”
Gage’s eyes were red and a little hazy as he set his glass down and turned toward Fallon. “Did Charlie…did he…force you? Did he hurt you, or—”