24. Gentle Things Survive
GENTLE THINGS SURVIVE
GRACE
The garden part is different at night.
During the day, it's chaos. Grant moving through it all with the calm of a man who's accepted that his life is a nature documentary and he's both the narrator and the subject.
At night it transforms.
The bioluminescent-inspired lighting is still running on backup power.
I don't know what designer decided that a botanical garden in a theme park needed to glow blue-green after dark, but they did, and the power system that Joel maintains keeps it breathing.
And now I'm walking through a space that looks like the inside of a dream.
The paths wind between beds of flowers that have closed for the night, petals furled, sleeping the way plants sleep.
Grant's always in the same place at night, the wildlife center, checking on the animals one more time. Tonight, I'm going to intercept him.
I see his silhouette against the glow. He's on the path ahead, watching something in the bushes. I see the moment he registers my footsteps. The slight turn of his head. The way his body shifts from observation mode to awareness-of-Grace mode.
"Hey," I say when I'm close enough.
"Hey." He doesn't turn. "There's a possum. She has babies."
I step up beside him.
In the shadows beneath a flowering bush, there's a possum. On her back, tiny faces peer out from fur. Babies. We watch the possum in silence. She waddles across the path, her babies clinging, and disappears into the bushes on the other side. The garden settles back into stillness.
Grant turns to me.
In the bioluminescent light, his face is all planes and shadows. The scar on his eyebrow that I've never asked about. The lines around his eyes that come from squinting into sun and watching things at a distance.
"Grace." His voice is quiet. "Why are you here?"
I could make a joke. Say something about the round friends needing a midnight check-in, or Kevin staging a coup. I don't. "Because you're the first person who just stayed still. And I wanted to come to you. Just because I wanted to."
Grant stands in the blue-green light, completely motionless.
I step close enough to touch him if I reached. "I want to touch you now. Is that okay?" I ask.
"Yes."
I put my hand over his heart. Grant always seems so calm. But his heart is pounding against my hand and his breath catches when I touch him.
"You can touch me back."
"I need you to be really sure. Because once I start I'm not going to want to stop and I need to know that this is something you're positive about."
I step into him, closing the last distance, my body against his body, my hand still over his heart.
Grant's hands come up. His palms land on my waist and his fingers spread across my lower back.
"Grace," he says, and my name in his mouth sounds like something he's been saying in his head for days, waiting for permission to say out loud.
"Yeah?"
"I'm going to kiss you now. Is that okay?"
"Please."
His mouth moves against mine slowly. Asking questions with his lips and waiting for my body to answer. His hands slide into my hair, angling my head so he can deepen the kiss. My fingers fist in his shirt, pulling him closer.
I pull back just enough to breathe. "Grant."
"Mm?"
"We're in the garden path."
"I know."
"Someone could see."
"Everyone's asleep."
"Kevin could see."
Grant laughs, soft and warm against my mouth. "Kevin's in the reinforced goat stall. I locked him in. On purpose."
"You locked Kevin in somewhere?"
"He ate the emergency seed supply yesterday. He's in time out."
"Kevin doesn't recognize time out."
"He recognizes locked doors." Grant's hands tighten slightly on my waist.
"Can we go somewhere with walls. Somewhere Gregory can't press his terrible vacation face against the acrylic and ruin my life. Somewhere I can..." I stop. Start again. "Somewhere I can let go."
His eyes move over my face. Whatever he sees makes his expression soften. "The rescue center," he says. "There's a back room. Storage. It has a lock."
I nod. He squeezes my hand. Once. Gentle.
We walk to the rescue center. I don't fall.
The storage room is small. Concrete floor. Metal shelving along the walls. Bags of animal feed stacked in the corner. A narrow window near the ceiling lets in the light from outside, casting everything in that same blue-green glow.
Grant closes the door, locks it, and turns to face me.
We stand there for a moment. Looking at each other. The space between us feels electric.
"We don't have to do anything," Grant says. "We can just…"
"I want to."
He crosses to me. His hands find my face, cupping my jaw, tilting my head back. He kisses me deeper this time. His hands move down my neck. Over my shoulders. Down my arms. He takes my wrists gently, brings them up, places my hands on his chest.
"Touch me," he says against my mouth. "I want you to touch me too."
I touch him through his shirt, over the fabric, feeling the warmth of his skin and the beat of his heart. I start working his buttons open. I'm clumsy, but he stands still while I fumble with each button, letting me unwrap him at whatever pace I can manage.
His shirt opens. He shrugs it off and lets it drop and I put my palms flat against his bare chest and feel him breathe. He's got more scars than I expected. Thin white lines on his ribs and a larger one on his shoulder and something on his hip that disappears below his waistband.
I trace the scars, following the lines of old hurts. "What's this one?"
"Cassowary. Australia. 2015." His voice is rough. "I was between her and her chick."
"This one?" I trace the one on his shoulder.
"Fence. Climbing into an enclosure I shouldn't have been in to get to an injured wallaby."
"And this?" The thin white line on his ribs.
"Kevin's predecessor. A goat named Lucifer. The name was accurate."
I lean forward and press my mouth to the cassowary scar.
Grant's whole body goes taut beneath my lips. I kiss each scar. His breathing gets rougher with each touch.
When I reach the waistband of his pants, I look up. "Can I?"
"Yes. God, yes."
I undo his belt with shaking hands. He helps. The logistics of undressing in a storage room are not insignificant. Then he's bare before me and I realize I've been imagining this wrong. He's broader than I thought. More muscled. The gentle exterior has been hiding strength.
"Grace," he says, and his voice is less controlled. "I want to see you."
"Okay."
He undresses me slowly. He takes off my hoodie and my bra with careful fingers. His thumbs brush over my nipples and I gasp.
"You're very responsive here," he observes, doing it again. His mouth replaces his hands.
His hands slide down my sides as his mouth works my breasts. He loops his fingers in my waistband and slides everything down, kneeling as he does.
“Grace, you’re…” He exhales. “I don’t have words.”
"You don't need words."
He stands. His hands find my waist again. He walks me backward, until my shoulders meet the wall. The concrete is cool against my bare skin. He presses against me, warm where the wall is cold.
"I want to take my time with you," he says.
He starts at my neck. His mouth traces down, mapping the column of my throat. He finds the place where my pulse beats and he stays there, kissing, licking, feeling my heartbeat with his lips. I let him explore.
His hands move over my body. The curve of my waist. The swell of my hips. The soft skin of my inner thighs. He touches everywhere, touches everything.
"Grant," I breathe. "Please."
"Please what?"
"Please more. Please everything. Please stop being careful."
He drops to his knees again. His hands settle on my thighs, spreading them gently. "Lean against the wall," he says. "Let me hold you up."
I lean back. He lifts one of my legs, drapes it over his shoulder, opening me completely.
His mouth finds me. His tongue traces through my folds. When he finds my clit, he circles it gently, testing my response.
I gasp. My hands find his hair.
"There," he says against me. "That's what you like."
He does it again and again, building a rhythm based on what makes me shake. His tongue works my clit while his hands grip my thighs, holding me steady, holding me open.
I feel it rising, the crest, and he must feel it too because his rhythm maintains that same steady pressure until I'm shaking against the wall and making sounds that will definitely wake the animals.
"Grant, I'm going to come."
"Good." He maintains that perfect rhythm. "Let me feel it."
The orgasm hits me in a long rolling crash.
He holds me through it. His hands on my thighs, his mouth gentling but not leaving, his presence steady and solid while my body does things I've never felt it do before.
When the wave finally recedes, I'm trembling.
My legs are useless. The only reason I'm upright is the wall behind me and Grant's hands in front of me.
He rises. Kissing his way back up my body as he goes. Stomach. Ribs. The space between my breasts. My throat. My jaw.
When he reaches my mouth, I taste myself on his lips. "My turn," I say.
"Grace, you don't have to."
"I want to." I push him backward until his shoulders hit the opposite wall. "You got to learn me. I want to learn you."
Grant takes a folded animal blanket from the shelf and spreads it over the concrete near the wall.
“For your knees,” he says.
I lower onto it.
He's hard and flushed and when I wrap my hand around him, he makes a sound that's halfway to a whimper. I lean forward and taste him. Salt and skin.
His hands move to my hair.
I work him slowly, learning what makes him gasp, what makes his hips jerk, what makes him switch from words to sounds.
"Grace, stop."
I pull back.
He takes my hands. I stand. He reaches into a small box on the shelf and pulls out a condom.
"Band-aid house supply?" I ask.
"Beck insisted everyone carry one after Joel's perimeter check."
"Of course he did."
Grant rolls it on, his ears going a little pink. "He called it emergency preparedness."
He lifts me. My legs wrap around his waist. My back presses against the wall. I feel him between us, hard and wanting. I reach down to guide him.
He pushes in slowly, and the stretch is immediate and intense. I gasp against his shoulder. He pushes deeper. I feel every bit of him entering me, filling me.
"Grace," he breathes when he's fully inside. "God, Grace."
He moves. Every thrust is intentional.
"I've wanted this," he says, and his voice is rough now, cracking at the edges. "I've wanted to know what you sound like when you let go."
His rhythm increases. Harder now. More desperate. The sound of our bodies meeting echoes in the small room.
"You feel incredible." His breathing is ragged.
The second orgasm builds differently. I feel it coming from far away and I let it happen.
"Grant," I say, and his name is the only word I have left. "Grant, Grant, Grant."
"I'm here. With you. Let go."
It breaks over me. I shake against him, around him, moaning and holding on to his shoulders. Grant groans against my neck and I feel him follow me over the edge, feel his rhythm break and his body shudder and his arms tighten around me as he comes.
We stay like that for a long time. Pressed against the wall. Wrapped around each other. Both of us breathing like we've run a marathon at high altitude.
He's still inside me. Still holding me up. His forehead rests against my shoulder and I can feel his heart pounding against my chest. "Grace," he finally says.
"Mm."
"I need to put you down. My arms are shaking."
"Your arms never shake."
"They do when I'm holding the most important thing in the world against a wall."
He lowers me gently, withdrawing carefully, and my legs immediately give out. I slide down the wall into a graceless heap. Grant disposes of the condom in the trash and then follows me down, sitting on the cold concrete, pulling me into his lap.
My whole body feels like it belongs to someone else.
"You okay?" he asks.
"I'm so far past okay. I'm in okay's vacation home. I'm sending okay a postcard from the other side of the galaxy."
He laughs. His arms wrap around me, and I let myself be held. He kisses the top of my head. His hand strokes down my back in long, slow movements, petting me.
"Hey Grant?"
"Yeah?"
"Gentle things survive."
He's quiet for a moment. His hand pauses on my back, then resumes. "What?"
"That's what I learned from you." I pull back enough to look at him.
The patience in his eyes. The softness he's never tried to hide because he never learned to be ashamed of it.
"I thought I had to be tough. I thought the falling and the getting up and the comedy were what kept me alive.
But you're the gentlest person I've ever met.
And you're still here. You survived. Gentle things survive. "
Grant looks at me for a long moment. "You're gentle too," he says finally. "Under the jokes and the words. You're soft, Grace. And that's not a weakness."
"It feels like a weakness."
"I know. But it's not." He cups my face in his hands. "Your softness is a gift."
I don't have a joke for that. "I think the round friends were right. You're good."
"I think Diego would say the jury's still out."
"Diego's a skeptic. Fernando's vote counts double."
When we finally get up, my legs are shaky but functional. Grant helps me dress. I help him find his shirt. We unlock the door together, peeking out to make sure no wrong people have wandered into the garden part.
"No Gregory," I whisper.
"No Gregory," Grant confirms.
The path is clear. Fernando and Diego are sleeping, probably dreaming about warm water and palm fronds and the absence of chaos goats.
“Thanks for waiting,” I say as we walk back toward the crime boat for a late dinner. Pepper’s next bottle is due in two hours, which means Grant will be back before anyone else has finished arguing about dessert.
He takes my hand and squeezes once. "Thanks for coming."
"That's what she said."
Grant stops walking. His face cycles through surprise and disbelief and finally lands on resignation. "You had to," he says.
"I had to. The moment demanded it."
"The moment was nice. The moment was meaningful."
"The moment was begging for that joke and I'm not strong enough to resist."
He laughs, shakes his head, and keeps walking, my hand in his. "Gentle things survive," he says. "And apparently, so do terrible jokes."
"The worst jokes are the most resilient. It's evolutionary."
"That's not how evolution works."
"That's exactly how evolution works. You're the animal expert. Back me up."
"I refuse to apply Darwinian theory to your humor."
"Darwin would have loved my humor. Darwin was a freak. All those finches? Freak behavior."
He's still laughing when we reach the crime boat.