22. Permanence Had Become Conditional
Permanence Had Become Conditional
When Jay awoke, he was aware first of warmth, then of the weight of Harris’s arm across his waist. At some point during the night, without discussion or formal agreement, they had ended up in the same bed.
Harris lay on his stomach beside him in his briefs, his face turned toward the pillow and his dark-blond hair flattened badly on one side.
Asleep, he looked younger—not young, exactly, but unguarded. The permanent vigilance had gone out of his face. No narrowed blue eyes. No expression suggesting somebody, somewhere, had installed a gate incorrectly. Just Harris, private and unarranged.
Jay watched him longer than was reasonable. Morning light edged the curtains, and the a/c rattled with the same mechanical complaint it had made all night. Somewhere in the hall, a suitcase rolled past.
None of it disturbed Harris. The man could, apparently, wake when a horse shifted strangely in a barn but sleep through industrial ventilation once sufficiently exhausted.
The previous night returned in pieces: the offensively bright bathroom light, Harris handing him a damp washcloth, sharing a glass of water. They had fallen back onto the bed mostly naked and completely spent, without discussing where either of them intended to sleep.
Jay shifted, and his ass lodged an immediate formal objection.
Right.
Not catastrophic. Not seek-medical-attention-and-reconsider-all-major-life-choices territory. But definitely more than the diplomatic a little sore he would admit if Harris asked.
He was sore as hell, though not injured.
Harris had tried to take his time, slowing whenever Jay tensed and checking every answer.
Jay, the one with relevant experience, had spent most of the preparation telling him to hurry up.
It had been spectacularly worth it and still represented a comprehensive failure of judgment.
But still worth it. Annoyingly, spectacularly worth it.
The more important problem was how easily Jay had trusted him.
He had not bottomed since before Miles—not because of any decision, but because the pattern of that relationship had hardened into habit, and nobody after Miles had mattered enough for Jay to hand over that much control.
Topping was easy. Bottoming required the physical certainty that a man would stop if something hurt wrong and, just as importantly, believe Jay when he said he wanted more.
Harris had done both. Every time he was unsure, he had stopped. Every time Jay told him what he wanted, Harris listened. Once the answers became clear, Harris trusted them enough to stop treating him like he might break.
Apparently Jay trusted Harris quite a lot.
That realization deserved more examination than he was prepared to give it before coffee. So did the fact that Harris had been ready to grit his teeth through something he did not want because he thought Jay expected it—and that he had previously lied about having experience with men at all.
Jay understood the instinct. Harris approached uncertainty as a private defect to be corrected before anyone noticed it. But Jay could not let that become the operating procedure between them.
I don’t know was an answer. Not yet was an answer. No was an answer.
Jay could handle inexperienced. He could handle uncertain. He could even handle Harris requiring several minutes and an aggressively practical metaphor before identifying an emotion.
What he could not handle was Harris deciding what Jay wanted to hear and supplying that instead of the truth.
They were going to have to talk about it. Preferably after coffee and after Jay’s ass stopped throbbing.
Beside him, Harris inhaled deeply and came awake. His eyes opened unfocused, settled on Jay, and narrowed with recognition.
“Good morning,” Jay said. “Sleep well?”
“You always wake up talkin’?”
“Usually I wait until I have an audience.”
Harris closed his eyes again, but his arm remained across Jay’s waist.
Jay glanced down at it. “You planning to keep me here all day?”
“Wasn’t aware I was.”
“You’re very possessive in your sleep.”
One blue eye opened. Then Harris removed his arm.
“Rude,” Jay said.
“Thought you wanted out.”
“I mostly just wanted attention.”
“Well, you got it.”
Jay rolled carefully onto his back. Too carefully, apparently. Harris pushed himself onto one elbow, fully awake now, his gaze assessing.
“You hurting?”
“A little.”
Harris stared at him.
Jay sighed. “Okay, a little more than a little. I’m sore, not injured, and before you decide this was entirely your fault, you were the one trying to slow down.”
Harris’s jaw tightened. “Should’ve known.”
“How? Through experience with the activity you had never done before?”
“Could’ve figured it out.”
There it was again: Harris’s belief that sufficient attention ought to make him responsible for information nobody had given him.
“I knew better,” Jay said. “I chose to ignore what I knew because apparently I become an idiot when sufficiently horny. Two fingers was ambitious.”
“Two?”
“You were there.”
“Didn’t know there was a required number.”
“There isn’t. Bodies are not standardized equipment. You just… have the dimensions of something requiring county permits.”
Harris’s eyebrows rose.
Jay closed his eyes. “That sounded more flattering internally.”
“Sure it did.”
“The point is, you were new, I was bossy, and the system failed.”
The corner of Harris’s mouth moved, and Jay reached over to push his sleep-flattened hair sideways.
Harris frowned. “What’re you doin’?”
“Your hair is doing something deeply unfortunate.”
Harris dragged a hand through it, making it worse. “Better?”
Jay laughed. “Much.”
For a little while, neither of them moved.
That was the strangest part: how easy it was.
Jay had expected awkwardness after the night before—Harris retreating, both of them finding urgent reasons to locate their clothing.
Instead Harris lay beside him in his underwear with terrible hair, looking irritated before seven in the morning.
No uncomfortable well, that happened. No sudden discovery that opposite sides of the room urgently required occupation.
Jay liked him like this. He liked the lack of performance, the fact that Harris did not appear to be waiting for an exit or rehearsing regret. He had slept with an arm around Jay. That was another subject worth postponing until coffee.
Harris reached for his phone. The screen lit his face, and every trace of sleep disappeared.
“What?” Jay asked.
“Red flag warning got upgraded.” Harris sat up and scrolled. “Winds shifted overnight.”
“What does that mean?”
“Means we’re goin’ home.”
Jay reached for his own phone. Three weather alerts waited, along with two missed messages from Priya. The newest read: Call me. Fire jumped containment north of Bridger. They’re canceling the regional session.
“Shit.”
Harris was already pulling on his jeans. By the time Priya answered, the private version of him had vanished beneath the rancher who needed information and work.
“Please tell me you’re awake,” she said.
“We’re awake.”
Harris glanced at Jay at the we, but the situation erased whatever response it might otherwise have earned.
“They canceled the regional session,” Priya said. “Emergency-management people are getting called back to their counties. Evan called. They’ve started moving cattle out of the north pasture.”
Harris held out his hand, and Jay passed him the phone.
“Priya. Don’t send anybody toward the fire. Fuel everything, back up every drive twice, and get the equipment ready to load if the warning expands.” He listened, his face tightening. “Where’s Evan?”
Another pause. “Okay. Tell him I’m on my way.”
He handed the phone back and finished dressing.
Jay pressed it to his ear while shoving clothes into his bag. “What do you need from me?”
“Get here safely. I’ve got the backups running. Eli’s packing the camera bodies separately from everything replaceable. Elise is clearing the remaining guests, and Della is packing food because apparently evacuation requires feeding the entire county.”
“That sounds right.”
“Evan asked us not to film yet.”
“Then don’t.” Jay disconnected, then turned to Harris. “How fast can we get there?”
“Three hours if traffic’s good.”
“Then let’s go.”
Five minutes earlier, they had been half naked in bed discussing the state of Jay’s ass.
Now Harris checked wind direction while packing with abrupt, efficient movements, and the transition felt almost violently complete.
Private Harris had not disappeared; he had been pushed beneath the work requiring him.
Jay knew the other version remained because he had woken beneath the weight of his arm.
Nobody at the ranch would see any evidence of him. The thought arrived without accusation. The ranch needed Harris as he had always been there: controlled, competent, and available to everyone. Jay simply knew, now, how much that version concealed.
Jay slung the camera bag over his shoulder. Harris gave the room one automatic final scan for anything left behind. They were out of the hotel twelve minutes later, the meetings abandoned without discussion.
* * *
For the first half hour, the morning looked disconcertingly normal.
Jay might have wondered whether the alerts sounded worse than the reality if Harris had not spent most of the drive talking to Evan.
The sky was clear, traffic moved easily, and fields passed beneath sunlight with no visible indication that a fire had crossed containment somewhere beyond them.
Harris’s phone was connected to the truck, and Evan’s voice filled the cab before they had finished breakfast.
He had already divided the work. Noah and two hands were moving the north cattle toward the lower pens. Pete had offered another stock trailer. Elise was contacting every occupied cabin while Evan staged vehicles so nobody could be trapped behind equipment if an evacuation order came.