27. Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“ W hat?”
I hear my own voice as the word comes out, but it seems echoey and distant, like I didn’t really say it. I repeat myself, just to check, but it sounds the same. I might repeat myself a couple of times, I’m not sure.
The way Sav and Gunnar are both looking at me like a lost little lamb is a strong hint that I might not be taking this news very well.
“Maybe we should talk about this upstairs.” Gunnar looks nervous, his gaze flicking between me and Sav.
“No.” I try to mentally shake myself out of my stupor. It doesn’t totally work, so I physically shake my head, and that wakes me up a little. Reality sinks in and I feel like my mind is at least attempting to wrap itself around what Sav just said. “Let’s just get it over with. I’m sure there isn’t much to say, right?”
Sav nods once, tight-lipped. I don’t even want to speculate what he knows. I don’t really care.
“He’s dead?” I ask, to quiet the anxiety spiking in my mind.
He nods again. “Dead. All the way dead, not ‘set you up for a jump scare later’, horror-movie mostly dead. Dead dead.”
I appreciate his candor. I think I needed the long version of the sentence for it to sink in.
Gunnar opens his mouth silently for a second, searching for the right words. “And you… You know this for sure? It’s not just hearsay?”
Sav looks at him now, his mouth set in a straight line and his knuckles whitening where his fists rest on the bar.
“Like I said. Dead.”
“Okay.” Gunnar nods, looking a little shell-shocked as well. “Okay. That’s good. Okay.”
“You’re babbling, sweetie.” I don’t know why I find it hilarious that he’s coming unglued when I am as well, but it’s almost surreal enough to make me laugh.
Gunnar snaps his head to the side, his eyes wide as he takes me in and his mouth halfway open to protest. Then he thinks about it for a second, and a nervous exhale-chuckle sound slips out of him.
“Yeah, well, you started it,” he says, half of his mouth curling up in a small smile as he looks at me.
“I’m a helpless victim. I’m supposed to be in shock, remember? You’re supposed to be the calm, rational one. If you start babbling and getting hysterical as well, who’s going to carry me to the fainting couch while I recover from this terrible ordeal?”
The whole thing comes out in this completely flat, deadpan voice, but my eyes are bright and I can feel a hint of a smile playing around my face as well.
It’s enough to make Gunnar crack. He laughs then, deeply. It’s pure relief, I think. The kind of crash that comes after being strung together by nothing but adrenaline and anxiety for too many days to keep track of.
“You’re okay?” he asks as he reaches out, pulling me into his side for a half-hug. Before I can even answer, he kisses the top of my head in that way he does sometimes, and I can feel a blush threatening to paint my cheeks at the raw affection. I duck my face into his neck to hide it, but it’s still there.
“I’m okay,” I mumble directly into his skin, before breathing in the scent of him to help fix myself in this moment.
We’re interrupted by the sound of Sav clearing his throat, and we both turn our attention back to him. He’s staring at us, his face blank, but obviously not nearly as amused by the situation as we are.
Not that we’re legitimately amused. More hysterically relieved.
“You guys are weird,” he says. “I guess you match that way. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know. And you don’t want to know the details, but there have been some changes in the Banna hierarchy. Some people have shuffled around. Long story short, no one expects you back. You are being granted a walking pass as a one-time exception for services rendered.”
My eyebrows raise, because as elated as I am to not be hunted down by a bunch of mafia thugs, I want to know exactly what he’s implying.
“By ‘shuffled around’, do you mean Patrick? Is someone else taking charge?” I stare at him for a second before the pieces click into place. “Are you taking charge?”
Sav snorts, and it’s the most emotion I’ve seen from him so far in this murder-adjacent conversation. “Fuck no. I hate those dumbcunts. I’m not leading shit. I’m staying right here, with you guys. And Micah.”
His voice catches a little when he says ‘Micah’, but I don’t call him out on it. I still don’t understand the nature of their relationship, but I’m getting a strong impression that it’s less brotherly and more something else. He’ll tell us when he’s ready.
“So that’s it?” Gunnar asks, looking between the two of us. “It’s all just over? I didn’t have to sell the soul of my firstborn in a dark alley or something? This seems kind of anticlimactic, I’m not going to lie.”
Another snort from Sav. “Trust me. It was very climactic, you just weren’t there for it. Again: you’re welcome.”
That’s when it kind of hits home just what he means. He really fixed everything for me. This guy who I barely even know—probably because he’s grateful to Gunnar, like the rest of us—risked god-knows-what and blotted all my mafia and Eamon-related problems out of existence.
I still have what feels like a thousand other problems, but that’s a big fucking head start.
I’m walking before I can think about it too much. It only takes a few seconds to duck around to the other side of the bar, stand up on my tiptoes because Sav’s too tall for his own good, and wrap my arms around him.
He’s stiff as a fucking board. I imagine Patrick was not a ‘hugging’ kind of father. Mine wasn’t either, to be honest. You can’t hug thin air. And I’ve never been known for my laid-back, affectionate approach to friendships. Or for my friendships, really.
But he deserves it. I hold him until he softens up just enough to hug me back, patting me on the back awkwardly for a second before I finally let him go.
“Thanks, bro.” I step back, inclining my head one more time to show him I’m serious. “I owe you a lot.”
He huffs and looks away from me before responding. “You don’t owe me anything, Tobias. I owe a lot more than this. We’re square.”
There’s so much sadness in him when he says it, I can practically taste the emotion dripping off his words. I don’t push it, though. I know what that kind of guilt feels like, and there’s not a lot anyone else can say to make it better.
“Okay,” Gunnar says yet again. “We’re gonna go upstairs and get ready for work. We’ll be back around open. You good, Sav?”
The man nods, turning away from us and picking up a rag to indicate the time for sharing and caring is now over.
When Gunnar turns to me, I feel utterly drained. It’s barely noon, and I already feel like I’ve lived a quarter of my lifespan just today.
I should have known the relief was too good to last. I move through the apartment in a daze, showering and finally changing into clothes that fit me correctly. Even if it immediately causes a pang of emptiness to not smell like Gunnar and feel the fabric of his clothes on my skin.
We rest and clean up a little, all of it in relative silence. I think we’re both processing. It’s almost time to go downstairs, and I know I should bite my tongue, but the silence is starting to eat at me.
I can’t stop thinking about the conversation we had at the hospital this morning, and I know if we don’t talk about it now, it’ll eat at me for the next ten hours.
“I’m not putting her in a home,” I say, fracturing our fragile peace.
Gunnar freezes, halfway through making some sandwiches. He seems to consider the words for a minute before putting down the knife and putting the lid back on the mayonnaise, abandoning lunch for now.
“I don’t think the doctor was talking about a home, like a nursing home. It’s a rehab facility, so she can receive medical care.”
“She’s not even seventy yet!” The anger that hits me is sudden and unexpected, but it immediately decides it wants to steer the course of the conversation. “I’m not farming her out. I can’t do that. We don’t do that.”
Gunnar stays very still, and it fucking irritates me how even and quiet his voice comes out. Even though I know he’s doing it to be considerate to me, because he doesn’t want to accidentally scare me, or something.
“It’s not farming her out, Tobias. She needs complex medical care. It doesn’t even have to be forever, but it definitely has to be for a while. The doctor said if the wound gets worse, they might have to amputate her foot. She can’t even walk right now, plus all the heart stuff that I didn’t even understand. I don’t think any one person would be capable of taking care of her, even if you were with her 24/7. She needs more care than you can give her.”
His gentle, soothing tone irritates me. The truth of his words irritates me. All my own inadequacies fucking stack up to irritate me.
I dig my heels in. I don’t know why. Crossing my arms over my chest, I look him square in the eye and say, “I’m not farming her out. Especially not here. What if the nurses are racist? What if they treat her like shit? She needs me.”
“Tobias, I’m not trying to tell you what to do. You can live in the trailer if you want. But I think you should listen to the doctors when it comes to this. I know it’s another money stress, but let me help you figure it out.”
“I can’t do it. We don’t do that.”
He stares at me for a minute, like I’m a fortress and he’s making his plan of logical attack to get to me. When he moves closer, I pull back, because I don’t want him to touch me right now, but all he does is take a seat on the couch. I don’t sit, because I need to pace, but he looks up at me expectantly while I move.
“We who? Explain to me what’s going on in your head right now to get you this worked up. I want to understand.”
I bite my lip for a minute, not looking at him and taking a few steps back and forth. Partially because I don’t really know how to articulate what’s upsetting me, and partially because I don’t want to tell him. It feels so fucking vulnerable, and he’s already seen me stripped raw in ways no one else ever will.
He keeps looking at me though, with that steady, patient gaze. I remind myself of what I told him the other night: I chose him. I choose him. Dragging my busted ass to his doorstep that night was probably the best thing I ever did for myself, and if I don’t fuck it all up, I think I could actually have a ‘rest of my life’ just because he’s in it.
Because I love him. And I should love myself first, or whatever. But right now, loving him feels easier. More stable. Especially when he keeps sitting there like he could wait out a million fucking temper tantrums and never bat an eye about it.
“Look, I’m a terrible Filipino person. I’m not white, I just have my gross, neo-Nazi father’s genetic donation, but I’m also fucking awful at being not-white. I don’t have fucking culture. I can count on one hand the amount of Filipino people I’ve met who I’m not blood related to. I kind of speak Tagalog, but mostly not.”
I take a deep breath before I continue. I don’t think this is the road Gunnar expected me to take when I started talking, based on his ‘oh-shit’ expression, but he’s still listening.
“Remember I told you my dad sucked? He left right after I was born, or maybe before. I don’t really know. But his dad was still in Mishicot, and that man basically drove us the fuck out of town. Racist fucking prick. He hated my mom and whatever ‘shame’ she had supposedly brought on his family. My mom won’t even talk about it anymore. I barely remember the details, but they weren’t good. We left when I was still in elementary school.
“I think it hit her hard. She was young, you know. And Lola couldn’t come with her because my grandfather was sick at the time. It was a whole thing. Anyway, when she met my stepdad, she threw herself so hard into her new life there was never a chance of looking back. Her kids may be half-native, but they’re raised 100% in his culture. Even she picked up a rez accent. Half the people there just assume she’s from Alaska or something. She peaced the fuck out of every other part of her life to make a new one, and it didn’t matter that I didn’t fit in there at all.
“So, I’m barely fucking Asian, except when I got shipped back to stay with Lola over the summers to keep me out of the way. I’m not fucking white, because racists still look at me and don’t like what they see. And I’m 0% native, unlike the rest of the people I grew up with. Basically, I don’t belong anywhere. I’m not shit.
“But if there’s any single part of being Filipino that got hammered into me, it’s that you take care of your fucking family. Especially your elders. I came here for her. She loves me. She needs me. I can’t give that up because she’s become inconvenient, or I’d be even more of a disappointment to my family than I am already.”
My breath is heaving by the time I finish speaking. It was a long speech, mostly coming out in run-on sentences while I waved my hands in the air and hoped I was making some kind of sense.
I’m expecting Gunnar to look at me with apprehension. Or second-hand embarrassment, because I just childhood-trauma vomited all over him. Instead, he’s giving me the same look he gave me before, downstairs.
The ‘poor Tobias’ look. The one that I mostly hate, but also sometimes kind of not, because it tends to come right before he gets all knight-in-shining-armor and fixes shit for me.
Which I’m probably supposed to hate even more, but I’m way too tired to pretend to have any pride left.
“What?” I ask, because he’s not saying anything.
He hesitates, like he doesn’t want to piss me off, but then his shoulders drop and he looks at me.
“She’ll still love you, even if you don’t physically take care of her every day. You don’t have to earn her love. I don’t know her well, but I’m confident about that. You take care of her by being around and being her grandson. The other stuff is just window dressing.”
Now it’s my turn for my shoulders to slump. That wasn’t what I was trying to say with any of that. The way he says it makes it seem like it was maybe what I was thinking, though.
I sit down on the couch next to him, because all my anger and hyperbole just ran straight down the drain. Gunnar picks up my hand, impossibly gentle as always, even though he should be too big to feel so delicate.
“I don’t know how it feels to go through the shit you just described. But I do know how it feels to be lost. And to feel cut off from your family, or your community. It sucks. Everything gets harder. I know you say that taking care of your grandmother is important, but when people say ‘take care of your elders’, they mean as part of a community. As part of a family unit. Not as one single person, trying to do it all by themselves with no support. Why is this burden on you but not your mom?”
“Dude, she has other kids. She deserves a chance at a real life after everything she went through to have me. It wasn’t her fault her baby daddy’s father was a psychopath.”
“I know. That’s my point: everyone has different circumstances. She does deserve a fresh start. But so do you. It wasn’t your fault you were born. Or any of the other stuff that came after. I wish you would stop trying to take on the burden of everything that happens as if it was caused by your personal, primordial sin.”
A wave of exhaustion hits me. He’s right. I know he’s right, and I’m too tired to fight him on it anymore. Knowing he’s right doesn’t make me feel any less guilty, but it makes me less interested in arguing about it.
Feeling a little pathetic, I lie down with my head in his lap. When his fingers push into my hair, like always, the tension starts to melt from my body, bit by bit.
“What do I do, then?”
“Talk to your grandmother. Ask her what she wants to do. Don’t worry about the money yet. Let’s figure the first part out and then we’ll deal with that.” He pauses. “Thank you for telling me, though. I kind of expected you to hang on to this for days.”
I almost smile, but not quite.
“Yeah, well, all the brooding was getting kind of tiring. You make things easier to deal with when I talk to you. I don’t know why.”
I hear Gunnar snort overhead.
“That’s what happens when you’re in a relationship. A healthy one, at least. I know it’s weird. I’m not exactly used to it either.”
I’m still lying in his lap, staring across the room instead of at him when I say the next words. It’s the only way I think I can do it, though. It’ll be easier next time.
“I love you, Gunnar.”
His breath catches, but he only freezes for a moment before he goes back to playing with my hair.
“Well, you better. You’re stuck with me.”
His soft laugh breaks the tension enough that I sit up, faking a glare before I also start to laugh. Gunnar grabs me, rearranging all my limbs until I’m straddling his lap, and pulls me into a kiss that goes from affectionate to devouring each other in roughly four seconds.
My hands grab at him everywhere I can reach—every inch of his flesh is solid but soft, and I can’t stop touching him, like I need a reminder of the reality of his presence.
I don’t care about the conversation we just had right now. I don’t care that we’re supposed to be going downstairs in a minute. I just need him. More of him.
I need to remind myself how real this all is.
“I know you wanted to wait,” I say as I break off the kiss, already breathless from his proximity and the feel of those big, warm hands everywhere they’re touching me. “But I want you. I like what we’ve been doing, but I still want you to fuck me. I think I need it. I’m not trying to push you. I get that it’s weird, after seeing… what you saw.”
I can’t help the way I instinctively turn away as I bring up the thing we both don’t want to talk about. Everything on the security tape that I know he must have watched after seeing me destroying his home at Eamon’s direction. Shame does its best to pulse to the surface, no matter how hard I fight it.
It’s not my fault. Everything that happened isn’t my fault. He keeps saying it and I keep saying it and sometimes I even kind of mean it, but it doesn’t make it any easier to feel the words on the inside.
The repulsion that I imagine Gunnar must have felt when he actually saw me with Eamon, instead of just hearing about it, is a constant weight on my mind. I know he says he wasn’t repulsed by me, but still. It’s all tangled up in a knot that’s so tight I think it’ll never be undone, and we’ll keep circling around this issue for the rest of our lives.
I want him inside me. There’s no explanation for how I know, but I’m confident that the feeling of it will make another shackle of memory fall away and I’ll be lighter afterward. But I can’t use him like my own personal sex toy or force him to push through his own discomfort, either.
Gunnar doesn’t sigh, exactly. He huffs, his lips in a tight line as he looks me up and down. He keeps holding me close, more of our skin pressed together than not, and the air around us already feels hot with anticipation.
“I’m scared,” he says, in a soft voice.
It’s the last thing I expected.
When I frown at him, he pulls me closer for a quick kiss. Like a reassurance before he continues.
“I’m scared to hurt you. I know that’s selfish, and I should be focused on what you need, but it’s true. I think about you getting scared, and then about how shitty I would feel, and then about how much worse it would be the next time, and the whole thing spirals into an endless catastrophic train of thought in my head. Which is completely unlike me. I’m always rational, for fuck’s sake.” He smiles at me. There’s tension around his eyes but it’s a real smile, because it’s honestly a relief that we’re finally talking about how fucked up we both feel. “I think you bring out the most irrational side of me, Tobias.”
Words fail me. He brings out all the irrationality in me, too. He makes me feel crazy enough that I ran to him again and again, even when all my protective instincts told me it was too dangerous.
Instead of speaking, I nuzzle into his neck, enjoying the soft scrape of his beard against my cheek and dragging my teeth along any open skin I can find.
“I know what you mean,” I finally say. “I’m terrified I’m going to fuck this up.”
When I finally pull away and look him in the eye again, lust has overtaken the nervousness in his eyes, and I feel like we’re thinking the same thing.
“Let’s do it anyway.”
Gunnar nods slowly, his eyes transfixed on my mouth for some reason. My lips sting a little, like they might be puffy already from the beard burn.
Before I kiss him again, I stand up. First, I run into the bedroom to grab condoms and lube, then I pull off my clothes as quickly as I can before any residual nerves can set in. Gunnar does the same, but more slowly. He unfastens the top few buttons on his shirt, then reaches behind his head to pull it off and cast it aside. He’s just as deliberate with his pants, unzipping them and shucking them, boxers included, while holding eye contact with me the entire time.
As soon as we’re both naked, I climb back onto his lap. He gathers me into him, making me feel small and contained. It’s an alien sensation, but one I have more and more when we’re together.
We kiss for a long time. Lazily, like we’re going to do it forever. Neither of us bother to bring up the places we’re supposed to be. This feels more important.
Our erections graze against each other, and I’m already simmering with an embarrassing amount of eagerness. I’m nervous as well, but the nerves flitter around me, never quite finding a solid place to settle. While the arousal and intensity that I see mirrored in Gunnar’s eyes feels rooted; right down through the couch and into the earth below. It’s immoveable.
Gunnar starts with slow movements. He wraps his hand around both our cocks, stroking us steadily until I’m whining and begging for more. Then he lets go, reaching for my hole and stroking me there, too. Not pushing in, but exploring me with tender passes of the pads of his fingers.
I shudder, because his touch is lighting up nerve endings I didn’t even know I had.
“Are you okay?”
With my forehead pressed against his, I nod.
“I’m here. Nowhere else. I’m okay.”
I don’t know if I’m reassuring him, myself, or both of us, but I mean it.
There’s some fumbling and rustling as he grabs around for the lube, but once his fingers are wet, they find their place again. Still, he doesn’t push in. He just strokes me, and the teasing feels impossible. Like I’m going to explode.
His reticence is a physical presence in the room. I grab his face with both hands, rolling my hips slowly until I’m grinding down onto his fingers, and look him in the eye.
“I’m nervous, too, Gunnar. But I trust you. Even if I freak out, I think we’ll both feel better once we’ve pushed through it. It’s just one time. I promise, we’re going to do it a thousand more times after this, if I get my way. Who cares if some of them suck? Law of large numbers, baby.”
I give him a shaky grin, hoping I’m selling the bravado thing. I do mean it, though. If there’s anyone in the world I can trust, it’s Gunnar. I’m not giving up on something I know I want, even if it takes a couple tries to get it right.
“Okay. Okay.” He mumbles the words to himself like a mantra. “Just tell me if you want me to stop. Promise?”
“I promise,” I say, breathless with anticipation.
My cock is straining toward him, already desperate to come and with absolutely no regard for my mind’s reservations on what we’re about to do.
Gunnar pushes into me excruciatingly slowly. He starts with one finger but quickly makes it two, teasing my entrance with shallow motions like he’s got all the time in the world. He works his way in, letting my body open up to him, and the whole time I’m stuck writhing and whimpering like a wanton thing, desperate for every bit of touch that he gives me.
“More,” I say, panting into his mouth before kissing him.
“Someone’s greedy.” I feel him smile against my mouth as he kisses me back, then breaks off again to look at me. “Look at you. Doing so well. Riding my fingers, desperate to come and asking me so nicely for more. What a good boy.”
I shiver, and Gunnar lets out a low chuckle that doesn’t help matters in the I-need-to-come department.
My hips grind down onto his hand as he pushes deeper, stroking inside me, while his thumb presses against me from the outside. The second he finds my prostate, an embarrassingly high-pitched whine is pulled out of me.
“Please, please, please,” I chant, practically bouncing on his hand like I’m already getting fucked.
His fingers stroke me inside again, and I can feel the precum trickling from the head of my cock. I’m so close, I just need a little more.
“So needy,” he whispers, although this time it sounds like it’s to himself, almost like he’s in awe.
He moves inside me, stroking and putting constant pressure in exactly the right spot to make the world blur and my thighs shake. I’m so close, but I need more. I need him to touch my cock. I need him inside me.
I need him to tell me I can come.
“Do you want to come now, or with my cock inside you?” he asks, gently finger-fucking me at the same time, like a fucking sadist.
“ Hng .” I wrap my arms around his shoulders and pull him closer, still bouncing my hips like I can force his fingers deeper. “More. Fuck. Inside, please. I want you inside.”
“What a good boy,” he whispers, before kissing the side of my face with a gentleness that doesn’t fit with the savage tear of pleasure that his hand is causing me right now. “Good boys always get what they ask for.”
I almost choke, clenching around his hand as my body tries to come, but can’t quite get there. My cock is flexing in mid-air, desperate for contact, and he’s still teasing me like he’s enjoying my frustration.
I whine again when he pulls his fingers out, leaving me empty and gaping. But then he rips open the condom package and slips it on one-handed, exuding the same simple confidence he does with most things, and I feel myself settle.
This is right. This is good.
I want this.
Once he’s positioned at my hole with one hand on the base of his cock, he uses his other hand to cup my cheek for a second.
“Are you still okay?”
“Yes. I promise.” I swallow, then watch the way his bearded throat bobs as he echoes the motion. “I trust you.”
For some reason, it feels even more monumental saying those words than it would have to tell him I love him again. It felt like I needed to repeat them out loud.
He holds my gaze as he pushes into me. The movement is slow and steady but unwavering, just like him. He gives me time to adjust, but no matter how long I wait for the panic to hit, it doesn’t.
Once he’s fully seated, I nod, wiggling my hips a little to make him gasp.
“Good. It’s good.”
I’m not exactly writing poetry over here, but I think he knows what I mean. It’s enough to make him smile, anyway. A slow, syrupy smile, just like the rest of this. With one hand on the back of my head, he urges me into a kiss.
His thrusts are slow and steady, as well. We share a constant, sloppy kiss, and let the rhythm build a little at a time, until I’m riding him as hard as my body wants me to and we’re both too breathless to do anything more than graze our lips together.
“Good?” he asks.
“Good.” I nod, then bring his hand to my cock. “More, please.”
He strokes me in time with his thrusts, and I feel myself approach the precipice of the orgasm that’s been teasing me for so long.
“As much as you want, baby. As much as you want. Now come for me.”
Finally, his words push me over the edge. I stiffen, my body tightening around his cock as I spill ropes of hot cum over his fingers.
Gunnar’s watching me so closely, I can almost see the way his eyes light up as I ride out my orgasm in front of me. He holds me close, fucking into me a few more times, still not too hard, but with more desperation than he let himself before. Then I get to watch him unravel as well, while I feel his cock pulse inside me.
The moment seems to go on forever, but I think that’s a trick of my mind. Like I’m trying to savor it.
I know this doesn’t mean we won’t have any sex-trauma disasters in the future, but I’m okay with that. This time was perfect. Other times will be perfect, too.
I have Gunnar. That’s the only thing I care about. Like he said, the rest of it is window dressing.
When he finally takes in a full, gasping breath, the first thing he does is touch my face again and look me in the eye.
“Good?” he asks. It feels like code, now. We’ve said it so many times.
“Good.”
My forehead thunks to his again, and we both breathe in each other’s air.
Gunnar sighs, all the unspoken fear he was holding back going with it, before he replies with a smile.
“Good. Fucking perfect.”