Chapter 7
SEVEN
Jesse woke up naked and sticky. He also woke up alone.
The shower was running, the chug of it echoing through the cabin, so Wyatt hadn’t ditched him, at least. But it wasn’t hard to interpret those vibes, the lack thereof, and the all-encompassing awkwardness besides.
Jesse washed up at the kitchen sink. He got dressed and sat at the table twisting his fingers together, cracking one knuckle and then the next, a nervous habit he’d trained himself out of years ago, in the days after attending his first mass casualty incident.
And Jesse was still cracking knuckles when Wyatt emerged from the little shower closet, wafting a faint cloud of steam behind him.
Fuck, he looked good.
It shot through Jesse, that realization, before anything else had time to land.
Wyatt had trimmed his beard, taken it short and neat.
Left his hair longer, though, kinda shaggy, and he was wearing as little as Jesse had seen him wear in months.
Just jeans and a t-shirt, both washed soft, the shirt gone a little slack at the neck.
Jesse had pulled on his own jeans. He was wearing the only sweater he owned that was actually his.
His own clothes, but they felt wrong, weirdly restrictive, leaving Jesse hyperaware of every place the rough, thick fabric touched his skin — hyperaware and aching for Wyatt’s flannel with a longing so strong that it genuinely hurt.
“Morning,” Jesse managed, for relative levels of managing. His voice sounded fucked. Way too quiet, wavering a little. He held out a mug of their shitty instant coffee. “Here. It’s fresh.”
Wyatt took the mug. He sat down opposite Jesse at the little table, making it even smaller just by being him, just by existing in the big body that had held Jesse down and—
Jesse shook his head, a minute little wobble. No thinking. Just watching. Wyatt’s hands, the curl of those big fingers around the scuffed metal of the mug.
“Jess.”
It took a whole lot, but Jesse forced himself to meet Wyatt’s eyes. “Yeah?”
Wyatt’s gaze was as calm and as level as it ever was, and that made it worse somehow. Maybe if they’d both been fucked up about it, then Jesse could deal. But seemed like Jesse was alone in the fucked-upness.
Alone in a whole lot else besides, because Wyatt was the one who’d—
Fuck.
—who’d finally made it back to the cabin to find Jesse dressed up like a freak, dressed up in freaking panties, rubbing his dick all up on Wyatt like some nymphomaniac femboy with cum to spare.
And sure, yeah, Wyatt had contributed, but what else was he gonna do in the weirdass, fucked-up situation Jesse launched him into.
Jesse had to close his eyes against the wave of toe-curling embarrassment that slopped over him. And that made it worse too, the weakness, the sticky-slow crawl. Jesse wanted a crash of it, there and gone, but it was a slop instead, a slow slide of shame.
He’d never been more embarrassed in his life, and there was no escape. He breathed through it instead. Dug his nails into his palms and let the sting of it keep him in his body. And when he did it, when Jesse found it in himself to open his eyes again, Wyatt was watching him, still.
He was watching Jesse when he reached for a bag tucked into the corner by the door. Wyatt slid it across the table. “For you.”
Jesse blinked at the bag, glitching. “What—?”
The corner of Wyatt’s mouth tipped up, but if that was one of Wyatt’s not-smiles, it didn’t reach his eyes. “Open it and see.”
Jesse opened, and Jesse saw — a whole new med kit, fully equipped, way better than the one Jesse had lost through the stupidity of his stupid fucking below-average dick.
His breath went sticky. He had to wait it out. “How?” was all he could force out in the end.
“Took on a few extra jobs.”
“What kinda jobs?” he asked, and the expression that flickered across Wyatt’s face was one that Jesse never wanted to see again.
“You don’t gotta know that, Jess.”
I’m gonna come back. I promise.
So what the fuck had Wyatt put himself through to keep that promise? How badly did he risk his own life and his own safety to keep one stupid promise to Jesse, to fix Jesse’s stupid, selfish fuck up?
Way too much, was the answer to all the questions Jesse didn’t want to ask.
He didn’t think. Just grabbed Wyatt and pulled him into an awkward hug. Jesse was a tactile guy, and the dam was broken now. Jack a guy off, grind on him, hug him — like fuck, what was the freaking difference?
Wyatt went stiff against him, for long enough that Jesse froze too. Because fuck, was Wyatt freaked? Jesse touching him like this after all that Jesse had done last night. Did it disgust Wyatt or freak him out or—
Wyatt made a noise, a grunt almost like pain.
The breath gusted out of him as he looped an arm around Jesse’s waist. He stood, lifting Jesse easy with that one arm.
His other hand came up to cup the back of Jesse’s neck, the back of Jesse’s head.
He hugged Jesse like that, held him like that, holding Jesse so close, his face tucked into the crook of Jesse’s neck.
“God, Wyatt.” Jesse’s hands clenched tight to Wyatt’s shoulders, gripping the washed-soft cotton. His eyes were burning shamefully. He couldn’t help it, and he couldn’t stop it. “I missed you so fucking much.”
“Missed you too, bud.” The words were thick, dragged out.
Jesse clung to them like a lifeline, like a longline hauling him up out of a horde to safety. Because he knew then how stupid he was, and how stupid he was to feel so stupid.
Wyatt and Jesse, they’d had each other’s backs for months, for years. They’d fought their way through the literal apocalypse together, and they’d do that again when spring came, and keep on doing it until maybe one day — god, please, one fucking day — they finally made it to safety.
So they sure as shit weren’t about to let an awkward morning after ruin things.
Jesse was gonna make sure of it.
* * *
In the painful light of day, it was pretty clear that all those extra jobs had left Wyatt more than a little banged up. There was crazy bad bruising all over his ribs, a hugeass, freaking nasty patch of road rash on his back, and a couple hastily dressed wounds that needed Jesse’s attention.
The one on Wyatt’s calf was deep, a bad laceration. Jesse cleaned it out and sutured it. The tear on Wyatt’s forearm wasn’t so bad or so deep, but Jesse irrigated it anyhow, easing the dried-up skin flap back into place with some temporary stitches and a whole lot of hope.
“We can forget about it.”
Jesse’s hands went still on Wyatt’s arm. Only for a second, though. He blinked past it. Concentrated on smoothing down the edges of the dressing. “Forget about what?” he asked, playing dumb.
“Bud.”
There was something kinda defeated in Wyatt’s tone, something so completely not Wyatt that it made Jesse clench up, then made him look up.
Wyatt’s eyes were big and dark and searching. “C’mon, Jess. You know what.”
Jesse did. But as previously signed, stamped and notarized — Jesse was a huge fucking coward. He just shook his head. That was all he had in him. Words would catch him in the lie.
“Nothing happened last night,” Wyatt said, which was a whole other lie.
Because a whole lot of something had happened last night. Namely, the kinkiest handjob of Jesse’s life and grinding so good it had him honestly reevaluating his sexual identity. That was a little more than plain ‘ole nothing.
“It was just adrenaline,” Wyatt carried on, “and too little sleep. It was a mistake, if you need it to be. If you need to forget about it.”
And look at that, the ball bouncing to a stop right in Jesse’s court, coming to a rest right there at Jesse’s clown feet. “Adrenaline…”
Okay, adrenaline, sure. It was still surging.
Adrenaline Jesse could blame for a whole heap of shit.
But he’d had more sleep in the past month than he’d had in years.
Jesse was disturbingly well rested. Jesse was of sound mind and even sounder cock.
He knew exactly what he was doing, then and now, in the godforsaken shit show of a dystopia they existed in.
And that was the distinction, right? Existed, not lived.
Except fuck, Jesse felt alive right then, in that moment, touching Wyatt. He felt so fucking alive. And maybe that was why he broke his own record and sidled on into the vicinity of brave for the second time in the same six-month period.
“What if I don’t wanna forget about it?” he asked.
It was Wyatt’s turn to look up. “What d’you mean, bud?”
Jesse hooked his good foot around the leg of Wyatt’s chair and tugged. The chair didn’t move, not even a little, not until Wyatt let it be moved — until he let himself be dragged right up into Jesse’s space, their legs tangling, no space left in between.
Jesse turned Wyatt’s arm until Wyatt’s hand was resting palm up on the table.
He pressed his thumbs there, right in the center.
“It’s like you said, right? We all get lonely.
” He skimmed his thumbs along the lines on Wyatt’s palm, traced the length of Wyatt’s fingers from one knuckle to the next.
Then he found it in himself, the last hit of bravery he’d be able to summon until the next calendar year.
Jesse looked up, met Wyatt’s gaze, the confusion there.
“We could keep each other company,” he said.
“We already do that, Jess.”
Jesse rolled his eyes, and he made sure Wyatt saw. “Company of a more, you know, carnal nature.”
“Carnal?” The corner of Wyatt’s mouth tipped up. “That’s an impressive word, bud. You find a thesaurus lying around someplace?”
“Fuck you,” Jesse said, no heat, nothing but a giddy kind of fond.
His answer was another of those rare Wyatt laughs. Two in twenty-four hours. Damn right Jesse was giddy.
Wyatt stood, dragging Jesse up with him. He caught Jesse around the middle and lifted Jesse like it was nothing at all, pushed him down onto the bed like it was even less.
Wyatt blanketed Jesse’s body with his own, and Jesse couldn’t help it. He spread his hands across the span of Wyatt’s back, tracing the width of his shoulders, freaking glorying in the strength that had kept Jesse safe and warm and never asked for anything in return, not once, not ever.
“I’d like to keep you company, Jess,” Wyatt said. His face was close.
Jesse tipped his chin up, letting their noses rub together. “I’d like you to keep me company.”
Wyatt’s mouth crooked. “Guess we’re keeping each other company then,” he said.