Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
LUCAS
He thought for a while he might miss Gage so badly he wanted to pull his own face off, but Lucas realized he was incredibly—and very happily—distracted for the entire week Gage was with Adele and Kash.
There was a lot of doing kid shit—not that Lucas minded.
He and Gage had always been the unofficial-official babysitters of the group, so he had plenty of ideas to keep Elodie entertained.
And since Elodie was working on her pre-braille skills, most of her books were accessible to Lucas, which meant he could help out with things like reading bedtime stories and helping her identify her shapes and letters and numbers.
It brought back weird, fractured memories from when he was a kid. His teacher guiding his hands into buckets and bins filled with different textures that made him want to scream and cry because they felt so awful against the pads of his fingers.
His teachers had labeled him stubborn back then. They’d told his dad that if he didn’t push Lucas, he’d never learn to read. They told him that Lucas was attempting to control things in a world that felt entirely out of control.
They hadn’t realized yet how things made him feel, so they forced him.
His dad thought he was doing it for Lucas’s own good, and it took a good therapist who realized that not all of Lucas’s rocking and head shaking and hand flapping were blindisms. That his refusal to eat mashed foods or be around anything that smelled like lemon or orange was a him thing.
An autistic thing.
That he was complex and occasionally very different from the other kids in his class.
That he wasn’t just throwing tantrums or trying to find a way to take charge of his life.
He was just tired and overstimulated.
And it was easy being with Elodie because Frankie listened to her. He understood when she was tired or fussy or overwhelmed. He took her into his arms without hearing whispers from therapists telling him that he was going to spoil her with too much affection.
Which was how Lucas realized he’d been starved for kind touch for a lot of years.
He just hadn’t realized it yet. His dad had—sort of.
He was trying to make up for it now, but there was no erasing the past, and there would always be a tiny void in his chest of what he hadn’t been given all those years ago.
“You’re quiet tonight,” Frankie said after Elodie had been given her muscle relaxants and sent to bed. The sofa shifted beside him, and Lucas turned to face Frankie as he settled. “Have I done something wrong?”
Lucas smiled a little and shook his head. “This week has been nice.”
And it had been. He went to work in the morning just like always.
He came home in the afternoon and took his shower and unwound with an audiobook or played a few hours on his online campaign.
But then he’d gather things from his kitchen and walk a few hundred feet down the hall and had officially made himself cozy in Frankie’s kitchen.
The man had even let him reorganize so Lucas didn’t have to hunt for so long to find silverware or cooking supplies.
Frankie took his hand, lifting it to his mouth, and kissed the inside of his wrist. His lips were soft and lush and so warm. “Are you sure?”
“Have I given off the wrong impression?” Lucas asked. “I know sometimes I make weird faces or look tense when I’m not. I spent years practicing, but I don’t think I ever got it quite right.”
Frankie sighed, and Lucas knew what was coming next. He let his body go pliant as Frankie lounged backward and pulled Lucas on top of him. The position was ridiculous but also fucking wonderful.
Lying on Frankie’s chest was the most comfortable Lucas had ever been in his life. He let his hand hang off the side of the couch, fingers grazing the floor, tracing grains in the wood.
“What do you mean by practice?” Frankie asked.
Lucas rubbed his nose along Frankie’s pec.
“You know, like…we live in a world of gestures, right? I read about them in books. He nodded, she shrugged, they grimaced. Whatever.” Lucas mimicked the gestures.
“I had no idea what half of them were. Obviously, some stuff came naturally to me. Smiling, laughing, crying. But I didn’t make faces on purpose.
I didn’t know hand gestures. When someone said thumbs-up, I thought it was this…
” He turned his open palm sideways and lifted his thumb toward the roof.
Frankie laughed, then sobered. “I’m sorry. I’m not mocking you, I swear.”
Lucas grinned and propped his chin up on Frankie’s sternum.
“I know that. And I know it looks ridiculous. When I was in school, I had a couple friends in our dorm who had some sight. And one kid who was recently blinded in an accident. So me and two of my friends asked them to teach us how to, you know, be like everyone else. I didn’t want to go off to college and not know how to flip someone off. ”
“That makes sense. I didn’t realize how much we pick up just by watching.” Frankie drew lines up and down his spine. “What was your favorite?”
“Flipping people off, obviously,” Lucas said.
Frankie burst into a fit of laughter and squeezed him. “Of course it is.”
“It comes in way more handy than a thumbs-up. That shit is for old people.”
“Wow.”
“Not you,” Lucas said, sitting up further. He smiled down at him, and then his cheeks relaxed. “Does my smile look weird?”
Frankie touched Lucas’s cheek with his palm, then grazed his skin with the tips of his fingers.
“No. You have very small dimples, which I love. And your smile is really natural. A lot of people your age—I think they have a very…cultivated smile. They’re always on their cameras—always being seen on social media, so they spend hours trying to look a certain way. You don’t. I like that.”
“Does Gage do that?”
“I couldn’t tell you. He doesn’t seem fake,” Frankie said quietly. “I used to catch Fenton in the mirror pulling faces at himself, trying to look suave or sexy.”
Lucas wrinkled his nose. “Oh. That’s…I don’t know what to think about that.”
“Neither did I,” Frankie said with a quiet laugh. “And neither did Fallon. He didn’t really give a shit. He didn’t even care if he was passing, you know? Not until he started taking a lot of heat from the assholes at his school. That’s when his dysphoria got really bad.”
Lucas felt his stomach twist. He was angry for the pain Fallon must have felt. He kind of got it. He knew what it was like to step into a world that saw him as weird and different and uncomfortable.
“Lucas?”
“Mm?”
Frankie was quiet for a long, long second. Then he said, “I want to ask you something, but I’m afraid it’s going to cross lines.”
“You can’t wipe my ass. I promise I know how.”
Frankie squeezed him hard, then kissed him. “Oh, princess, you really love being a brat, don’t you?”
Lucas grinned and shivered with joy at the sound of the name that was just for him. “Kind of. I like the noises you make when I say stuff like that. They’re happy brain scratches.”
“Rumbles and groans?”
“Mhm. All spicy…and heavy and rich like vanilla.”
Frankie kissed him again. “I don’t want to make you feel weird, but I’d like to take you on a date. It doesn’t have to change this—change what we have. But it’s been a long time, and I thought it could be nice. Though I’m totally fine if you don’t want to take the risk and be seen with—”
“Wait.”
Frankie’s lips shut with a quiet little popping sound as skin met skin.
Lucas reached out and traced the seam of his mouth. “Is that the question you wanted to ask me?”
“Mhm.”
“Why would that cross lines?”
Lucas pulled his fingers away as Frankie licked his lips.
“We…have an agreement. You said you weren’t in a good place for dating, and I respect that.
But I want to show you more than a good time in the bedroom.
And I want you to have a break from cooking for me.
We can go somewhere—the next town over if you don’t want to be seen, but—”
“Wait.”
Frankie shut his mouth again.
“Do you think I’m ashamed to be seen with you?”
Frankie took in a deep inhale, his chest expanding, lifting Lucas’s body with it. “I’m not the most well-liked man in town. For obvious reasons. Though I rarely fuck up as badly as I did with you.”
Lucas sighed. “We decided to be over that, remember?”
“Fine, fine. But my point stands. There are a few restaurants where I’m more than welcome, but I am…older. I know it doesn’t matter to you, but I look older. I have a lot of grey hair—”
“I know.”
“You asked?”
Lucas snorted. “I can feel it, honey. There actually is a different feel to hair colors. When it’s dyed, I can get kind of lost, but natural? Yeah. I know where your greys are. I like them.”
“Okay. But…I’m just trying to say I understand why you’d prefer not to.”
“I never said I preferred not to. I just said that I felt a little fucked-up in the head, and I was afraid I might be a bad boyfriend.”
Frankie was quiet again, and Lucas wondered if maybe he’d broken something between them. The air around them didn’t feel tense, and Frankie’s posture hadn’t changed, but he was rarely at a loss for words like this.
“Do you still feel like that?”
Lucas swallowed heavily and pressed his entire face against Frankie’s chest. He didn’t want to answer because he didn’t know. He wanted to believe he could be good for Frankie and his little family. Over the last week, he’d gotten comfortable. He’d felt at home.
But would that last? What happened when he became overwhelmed? What happened when Frankie forgot to stop being careful where he put things? What if he realized that for as independent as Lucas always had been and always would be, there were some things he could just never, ever do?
That life with him wouldn’t be simple or easy?
“I’m sorry if that was the wrong thing to say,” Frankie told him.
He toyed with the curly plastic hair tie that was keeping Lucas’s messy bun in place.
Reaching behind him, Lucas tugged it out, letting his hair fall around his shoulders, and then he whimpered until Frankie began to card fingers through his hair, untangling some of the knots.
He knew he should say something. Someone else would have spoken by now. They would have unstuck their tongue from the roof of their mouth and at least uttered a few words. But Lucas felt trapped in his own head.
“It’s okay,” Frankie murmured softly. He pushed Lucas’s hair off his neck and tickled his sensitive skin at the edge of his hairline. “It’s okay, princess. I’m sorry for making it—”
“No,” Lucas rasped. Even that word felt like he was pushing a boulder up a hill, but he had to stop Frankie before he said all the wrong things. “It’s not you. I just…it’s…I can’t…”
Frankie’s fingers traced along Lucas’s face—feeling around like Lucas used to do when he was very little and learning what eyes and noses and mouths were shaped like. It was tender. His touch was careful but bold, like he knew he had permission to get his hands all over Lucas and keep them there.
Minutes slid—honey thick and slow—into half an hour. Then forty-five minutes. Frankie’s chest rose and fell, and if it weren’t for the way he was still drawing lines over Lucas, he might have assumed the older man had drifted off.
He took in a breath, then broke the spell by propping up on his forearm. His free hand reached out, and he curled his fingers into claws, scratching them over Frankie’s short beard. “I think I’m a lot. And please don’t argue because I am a complicated person.”
Frankie chuckled. “I wasn’t going to argue.”
“Ouch.”
Frankie laughed again. “I’m sorry, but I know you don’t want me to lie to you. You are complicated, and I think for most guys, that can be a lot. But that’s because they don’t see the logic in what you need.”
“I don’t understand.”
Frankie let out a puff of air, then he put his fingers against Lucas’s arm and traced them up and down toward the crook of his elbow. “Like this. It didn’t take me long to figure out that any harder would upset you, and any lighter would hurt you.”
Lucas bit his lip. Hard. How did he just…get it? How did he just know when his own dad had taken years and years to understand?
“You have a system in the kitchen that actually makes a shitload of sense, but I never thought twice about it because I’m used to opening drawers and staring around at stuff until I find it, even if that takes me ten times longer than the way you do it.
But it’s what I’ve always done, and someone else might not want to make a change, even if it’s better for them. ”
Lucas felt his lips rise into a smile, and he rested his chin on his forearm, his eyelids somewhere between open and closed, but low enough he didn’t really feel the urge to blink.
Frankie traced the shape of his ear a little too gently. It made him shiver. “Everything you need is worth the effort.”
“It helps that you have Elodie, doesn’t it?” Lucas asked quietly.
Frankie sighed and brushed a few stray wisps of hair away from Lucas’s forehead. “Maybe. I like to think I would have been patient enough and willing enough to meet you more than halfway even without her.”
“I don’t think it matters,” Lucas eventually said, and he meant that. “I’d never keep a single friend if I expected them to be perfect for their entire lives.”
“Pragmatic of you.”
Lucas laughed and buried his face in Frankie’s chest, hunting and then biting down on his nipple.
“Hey,” Frankie said, trying to keep his voice down. He hugged Lucas and rolled until they were on their sides, legs tangled together, still pressed chest-to-chest. “I like you a lot.”
“You keep saying that. I don’t know what it means.”
“It means that I’ll be whatever you need me to be. Friend, neighbor, lover—”
“Oh my god, you’re such an old man. Lover?”
Frankie laughed again and kissed Lucas on the jaw. “I don’t know what kids call it these days. Situationship partner?”
“Oh my god, stop.”
Frankie snorted. “You know what I mean. I’m here as long as you want me. And if you’d like to maybe try a date—”
“I’ve never been on a date. Not…not really.
” And that was true. He’d done the coffee thing.
The walk in the park thing. Once, he’d met a guy at a bar and spent most of the evening with him, but then he got weird in the parking lot while Lucas was waiting for his Uber and…
yeah. None of those things felt like they counted.
“So maybe I can give you another first.”
“I like the firsts you’ve given me so far,” Lucas said with a grin. He found Frankie’s hand and pushed his fingers open so he could kiss his palm. “I think I’ll like this one too.”
“Then it’s a date.”
“Cringe.”
“But you like it.”
Lucas sighed and leaned heavily into Frankie’s arms. “Yeah. I do.”