Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
GAGE
He woke the way he always did lately: panicked, cold sweats, heart beating so hard he could feel it in his mouth. A wave of nausea crashed over him, and he attempted to breathe through it as he rolled over and…oh fuck. He wasn’t alone.
He was in bed with…
With…?
Fallon.
Reality hit him like a freight train as the events of the night before began to surface in his memory. The apartment next door. The new neighbor. Him attempting to play the hero and then nearly getting bludgeoned to death by a dildo.
He pressed his finger to the side of his eye and winced at the pain.
When he blinked, he felt his eyelids struggle to part, which meant yeah.
He had a black eye, and it was nicely swollen.
The only upside was that his colleagues would absolutely believe he ate shit trying to rescue a kitten because he’d done that twice now.
Taking a breath, he rolled further onto his side and forced his good eye open and saw Fallon flat on his back, one arm flung over his head, mouth parted gently. His breath was slow and even, and he looked more relaxed than Gage had ever seen him before.
He fought off the urge to reach over and touch him because God, he really liked touching him. But it felt all wrong now. Now that he knew what was going on with him. Now that he knew what Fallon was facing.
He had no idea what to do about it.
He hung out with plenty of trans guys in gaming. Hell, there was a trans masc firefighter who was often on shift with him, and Gage loved them. But he’d never asked about pregnancy. Or dysphoria. Or any of the other shit that Fallon was probably facing.
He was definitely not the guy to swoop in and help.
At least, not apart from being a friend and apparently—as last night proved—crawling into Fallon’s bed nest and cuddling all night.
Which had been both for Fallon and for himself because while he was a selfish bastard and sex was clearly off the table, he would take any excuse to touch him.
Fuck, he needed to clear his head.
Rolling out of bed, he shuffled around Fallon’s room, which was still full of boxes, and found where he’d dropped his sweats. He did his best to dress quietly, but it wasn’t good enough because as he tugged his sweater over his head, his gaze settled on a pair of eyes watching him.
Fallon was silent for a long moment, and then he sat halfway up. “Your face.”
Gage frowned, which made the pain in his eye worse, which then made him realize what Fallon was talking about. “It doesn’t hurt,” he lied.
Fallon made a soft scoff in the back of his throat and didn’t need to call him a liar with words. “Are you sneaking out?”
“No.” Gage walked back to the bed and set his knee on it, reaching over to ease Fallon back down. “I have to run a couple of errands. Do you need anything while I’m out? You know, since you just moved in?”
Fallon shook his head. “I’m okay. You, um…you don’t have to come back here if you don’t want to.”
“Is that what you want?”
“I say what I want,” Fallon reminded him.
Gage bowed his head and laughed. “Yeah, I guess you do. Well, I’ll trust you to tell me if you need space. And I’ll try to do the same.”
Fallon smiled as he settled back into his nest of pillows. “I’m going to sleep more. I’ve been so damn tired.”
Gage nodded and fought the urge to lean over and kiss him. But that wasn’t his right. That wasn’t their thing. Not anymore. Not past that one glorious night. He curled his fingers into his palm and squeezed his fists until the desire eased.
“Call or text me if you need anything. My number hasn’t changed.”
Fallon nodded, his eyes drooping back down and eventually closing. When his breathing evened out, Gage backed up, then slipped into the living room to grab his keys, and he headed back to his place and shut the door with a loud, firm click.
Sagging against the wood, he closed his eyes and focused on his heartbeat.
It was steady, but a little fast from the adrenaline that had been firing since yesterday.
He needed to get out. To go for a run. A hike.
Maybe he could sneak into the firefighter training session and run some of the courses.
If he worked out until he puked, that would take the edge off…right?
Swapping his sleeping sweats for his running ones, he headed out of his apartment and paused in the hallway, his ear trained toward Fallon’s apartment. But there were no sounds. Fallon was probably still sleeping, and Gage half regretted getting out of the bed at all.
It was his day off. He had every right to curl up and take fifteen naps like a damn house cat. And what better way to do that than in the arms of the one man who had made him feel like his heart could heal?
He took to the street instead and began running until he found himself standing outside the station. Like a kid, he’d run to his dad, and he felt like a complete fucking tool.
“Fuck, Gage. Get it together. Get it—”
“Whose ass am I kicking?”
Gage turned and frowned at his dad. “What?” Adele gestured at him, and it took Gage a second to remember. “Oh. Uh…I fell out of a tree?”
“The fact that you’ve done that before means I won’t call you a liar, but your tone says different.” Adele walked up and grabbed Gage by the chin, turning his head up until Gage wrenched away and shoved him back. There was a tense pause, and then Adele said, “Coffee?”
“Blue Gatorade unless someone—Carlos—fucking drank it all again,” Gage said.
Adele rolled his eyes but put his hand in the center of Gage’s back and urged him through the tall glass door.
He felt like a total jackass for being there on his day off, but the station was always quiet on a Thursday morning. He could hear the TV blaring from the upstairs lounge, and someone down one of the halls was snoring like a fucking grizzly.
It was his home away from home, and while it wasn’t as comforting as the childhood bedroom that no longer existed after the fire, it was where his dad was, and that made a difference.
He followed Adele up the stairs and into his office, not surprised when his dad shut the door, then walked to his hidden closet fridge and pulled out a bottle from Gage’s stash.
He cracked the top, and Gage gulped down several mouthfuls because he hadn’t bothered to hydrate before he started his run.
“So. A tree,” Adele said.
Gage sank onto his dad’s couch and kicked his feet up on the armrest. “It was seriously nothing.”
“And yet you look…” Adele was clearly choosing his words carefully. He sat behind his desk and leaned on his elbows, staring at Gage. “Upset.”
“It’s been a weird twenty-four hours. Well, twelve hours. Well…” He lost track of the math and trailed off with a shrug. “Night.”
“Explain.”
Gage rolled his lips between his teeth. He didn’t know how much he should say. He didn’t know how much he could say. He’d made Fallon a promise, and he wasn’t going to break it. But he also didn’t like keeping secrets from his dad.
The last and only time he’d done that, it had nearly killed him.
“I met someone a few months ago.”
Adele stiffened. He was on edge every time Gage brought up dating after everything that had happened. “Okay.”
“Good friend. Nice guy.” Gage closed his eyes and tried not to think about what he and Fallon had done because his sweats would not hide anything, and he was done getting embarrassing boners in front of his parents. But what they’d done together was important. It had meant something to Gage.
He swung his legs off the couch and rested his forearms over his thighs, bowing his head.
“We…you know.”
“No details,” Adele said.
Gage scoffed. “Like I would. Don’t be disgusting.” He took a breath. “It was the first time I…you know. Since.”
Adele grunted. He got irrationally angry every time he thought about what happened to Gage, but he was trying to keep it in check. “Mhm.”
“I thought it was going to feel bad, or scary, or…you know, bring up bad memories?” He chanced a look at his dad, whose face was open and soft.
“I get it.”
“It didn’t, ah,” Gage tried, searching for the right thoughts.
“The guy disappeared on me, but it didn’t feel bad after.
It felt…” He searched for the words. He’d talked about it with his therapist a bit, and they’d come up with empowered, but that never felt fully right to him.
The feelings were so complicated he almost didn’t want to give them a name.
“I guess it felt like proof that I wasn’t ruined. ”
“Gage,” his dad said softly.
He held up a hand. “I know I’m not broken or ruined or whatever. I just…that sort of shit changes things, and I was scared how I was going to react after the first time I tried to get intimate with someone. But it was nice.”
“Okay. What does this have to do with your black eye?” Adele asked.
Gage blinked at him. “Nothing.” That was a lie, but indirectly. The black eye had been the consequence of his bad choice. But he had a bad habit of barreling forward like a rabid rhino and only thinking about it afterward. “That was literally an accident. But last night, I ran into the guy again.”
“Oh.” Adele went quiet for a second. “And…?”
“And he had some serious shit happen over the last few months. But we had a nice talk. We spent time together.” All night. Holding each other. “But he’s going through it, and I feel, like, so beyond underqualified to help him with his shit.”
“Did he ask for help?”
Gage flushed. “Well, no, but…”
“You saw me have to learn my lesson with Kash the hardest way possible, kid. I’m always happy to have you follow in my footsteps, but you know, you can also pick better footsteps than those ones. I’ve left a lot of them behind.”
Gage rolled his eyes, which hurt like hell, and he sat back with a small huff. “I hate you.”
“You really don’t.” Adele stood up and walked over, dropping beside him. After a moment, he reached for Gage’s hand and took it. Gage’s fingers were longer than his dad’s now, though Adele’s hand would always be larger.
He dwarfed Gage in so many ways, which used to piss him off when he was a teenager, but now it felt good to know that he could still feel small and vulnerable with someone who loved him. He looked up at his dad’s face. He’d never seen himself in Adele’s features.
Gage’s heritage got a little more ambiguous as he got older, the European genes a little more obvious as he aged. But there were moments he was profoundly aware he’d come from somewhere else. That if people had made a few different decisions, he might not be here at all.
He didn’t think about that often, but every now and again, it weighed on him. It felt like a betrayal to want to know where he came from because this family loved him so fucking much, and he loved them right back.
But he wondered if his biological family was like him too. Did they have ADHD? Did they act before they took ten seconds to think? Did they trust too easily and too quickly? Did it hurt them the way it hurt him?
Or was he just…unique?
“Talk to me,” Adele said softly.
“I think I’m still a little messy,” Gage admitted. “I don’t want to be. I…I want to look this guy I like in the face and tell him that I can be a good boyfriend without the fear I’ll fuck it up just by being myself.”
Adele squeezed his hand, then tugged him into a side hug. Gage collapsed against his dad and breathed in the scent of the earthy shower gel Carlos always brought into the station locker room. “I think if everyone waited until they didn’t feel messy, no one would ever take a chance on love.”
“Do you ever think that maybe all y’all are just the exception to the rule?
” Gage asked quietly. Yeah, all his uncles, and his dads, and even Lucas were messy as fuck.
But they were also happy now. Only…what if he was going to be the odd man out?
Aligned with the rest of the world, but not his family?
That felt a bit like how it felt being adopted.
“Or that I am,” he added.
“I can’t tell you if it’ll work out with this guy,” Adele said, and Gage could tell he desperately wanted to ask who it was. “I can’t tell you if he can handle messy. Or if you can handle his complications. But you’ll probably regret it if you don’t try.”
“Would you have said that to me about Lucas if I hadn’t been a teenager?” Gage asked.
Adele sighed and shook his head. “No. Sometimes it’s worth falling in love with your best friend. Sometimes, it’s not.”
It wasn’t like Gage wanted to argue. Lucas wouldn’t have been a fraction as happy with him as he was with Frankie. Gage could never live up to that. And he didn’t want to have to live up to anything. He didn’t want to change parts of himself to become perfect for someone else.
He wanted to be loved as he was. For who he was.
He had no idea if he could be that for Fallon—or if Fallon could be that for him. But something about the other man felt different than anyone Lucas had ever dated or known. With Fallon, even stepping into something that scared the shit out of him, he felt safe.
And that had to mean something.
“I just—”
He didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence. A call came through, and Adele shot to his feet, giving Gage an apologetic look. “Unless you want to clock in and earn some OT—”
“I’m beat. But thank you.” He snagged a hug before Adele jogged out of the office, and he took his time, waiting for the truck to roll out before he made his way downstairs and out onto the street.
He didn’t feel better. He didn’t feel unburdened. He still had no idea what Fallon might need from him or how to give it when he did learn.