30. Suppose If I Wanted To
Suppose If I Wanted To
Harris was sitting at the guest-cabin table when Jay entered, one beer open beside him and several insurance forms arranged beneath the lamp.
He looked up immediately.
For a moment neither man spoke. The invitation had been vague enough that Jay could have pretended to misunderstand it, and the paperwork gave Harris somewhere safer to look if he regretted asking.
“You appear to be having an excellent evening.”
“Living the dream.”
“I assume the dream involves depreciated replacement value.”
“Mostly itemized losses.”
Jay closed the door behind him. “Even sexier.”
The cabin was smaller than Harris’s had been and furnished for guests rather than permanence: a generic landscape over the couch, enamel mugs beside the sink, a brown-and-burgundy bedspread selected by someone with a limited theory of Montana.
Nothing belonged unmistakably to Harris except his boots by the door, his hat on the counter, and the man himself beneath the yellow light.
His gaze moved over Jay. “You doing all right?”
“I’ve spent the day packing cables and being told I fold shirts incorrectly. I may never recover.”
“Lungs?”
“Still in there.”
Harris waited.
Jay sighed. “I’m fine.”
The phrase changed something in Harris’s face.
It belonged to the mountain now, to a night when honesty had meant admitting neither of them knew whether the next ten minutes were survivable.
Here it referred only to healing lungs, insurance forms, and a night neither of them had named out loud as their last.
“Good,” Harris said.
Jay crossed to the table. Harris’s inventory filled the page in compact handwriting: bed frame, stove, boots, tools, books.
Ordinary nouns trying to account for a home.
There was no line for Nell’s handwriting inside the books or Claire’s refinished table or all the small things that had mattered because Harris had lived among them long enough for them to become invisible.
Jay put his palm over the form. “You can’t spend our last night filling out insurance paperwork.”
“Got a deadline.”
“So do I.”
Jay had not meant for the words to sound like that. They sat between them anyway, too sharp to pretend they referred only to forms. He stepped between Harris’s knees and rested his hands behind his neck.
Harris looked up. “Suppose you do.” His left hand settled at Jay’s waist, the bandaged right remaining close to his body.
Neither moved closer at first. They knew what came next, which might have been the problem.
Familiarity had accumulated between them without either man noticing when it became dangerous.
Jay knew the slight narrowing of Harris’s eyes when he wanted something but was deciding whether to reach for it.
Harris knew exactly how long Jay usually tolerated silence before filling it.
Tonight Jay let the silence stay.
Harris’s thumb moved once along his side. “You all packed?”
“Mostly. I still can’t find my favorite blue hat.”
“Navy one?”
Jay looked at him. “Thank you for finally respecting the distinction.”
“Check the van?”
“Twice. Eli claims he hasn’t seen it, but his testimony is unreliable.”
“Probably turn up.”
“I hope so. I look excellent in that hat.”
Harris’s mouth shifted slightly. “Course you do.”
Jay bent and kissed him before he could decide whether that had actually been a compliment.
Harris answered slowly at first, almost cautiously, before pulling him closer. The beer bottle shifted beneath Jay’s hand, and he moved it out of reach before the insurance documentation ended up soaked.
Clothes came off as they made their way toward the bed, Jay repeatedly interfering whenever Harris tried to use the injured hand as though nothing had happened to it.
“You continue to misunderstand how injuries work.”
“Shut up, Navarro.”
Harris kissed the place beneath his jaw that made the next remark inaccessible.
His hands no longer moved over Jay by trial.
He knew where Jay was still tender and avoided those places without looking, adjusted when the healing shoulder pulled, recognized when Jay’s breathing changed because something felt good and when it meant he needed a second.
They had always been good at this part. Before the fire, Jay had treated that as evidence of physical compatibility and unusually successful bad judgment. Now Harris knew him too well for the explanation to remain that simple.
Being known by him had happened gradually enough that Jay had failed to recognize the risk until there was no reasonable way to undo it.
Harris drew him toward the alcove and lowered him onto the mattress with a care that landed harder than urgency would have.
“You’re bein’ strange,” Harris said.
“Am I?”
“Quiet. Usually you talk enough for both of us.”
“Normally you find that charming.”
“Never said that.”
Harris took his time.
He had not really planned to. Planning would have required admitting how often he had imagined this night before Jay crossed the yard, or how empty the cabin might feel after he left.
Now Jay lay beneath him, warm and familiar, dark hair spread across the pillow, and moving slowly seemed like the only available way to keep tomorrow from arriving too quickly.
His attention kept returning to the fading evidence of the fire: the healing burn at Jay’s shoulder, the bruising along his side, the scrape near his hip.
None of it looked dangerous anymore, but Harris remembered too clearly how each mark had happened.
When Jay caught him looking and tried to make light of it, Harris bent and kissed the bruise nearest his hip until whatever joke had been coming disappeared.
There had always been care between them, even when neither called it that. Tonight there was no reason to disguise it as anything else.
Harris moved slowly over Jay’s body, lingering over places he had rushed past before. He kissed the center of his chest, the soft skin below his ribs, the inside of one thigh and then the other. Jay’s fingers moved into his hair as Harris worked lower, not directing him, simply staying connected.
Harris paused there.
Jay looked down, surprise flickering across his face before he deliberately relaxed against the pillow. He did not tease him or offer instructions.
Harris appreciated that enough not to mention it.
He wrapped his left hand around Jay and let his mouth follow the movement, first a kiss against the head, then another, his tongue tracing briefly along the sensitive underside. Jay’s hips shifted before he caught himself.
The response went through Harris like heat.
He took him into his mouth only a little farther, enough to feel Jay’s fingers tighten in his hair and hear his breath break, then drew back. This was not something Harris wanted to learn in a hurry, not tonight.
Jay opened his eyes.
Harris kissed the inside of his thigh again.
“Tease,” Jay murmured.
“Thought you were being quiet.”
“Momentary lapse.”
That was nearly all they said.
Harris reached for the condom and lube, and Jay took the packet from him before he could struggle one-handed with it. Their fingers brushed as Jay rolled it onto him, the simple familiarity of the gesture somehow more intimate than it had any right to be.
Harris settled between his thighs and prepared him slowly with his left hand. Jay opened for him more easily now, his body already familiar with Harris even if neither of them had decided what that familiarity was supposed to mean.
Harris knew his reactions well enough that he no longer needed much guidance.
He saw the slight tightening around Jay’s eyes when something pulled, the way his shoulders dropped when the pressure became pleasure, the parting of his lips when Harris found the angle that made thought briefly inaccessible.
Jay pulled him closer by the back of the neck. “Come here.”
Harris positioned himself between his thighs. The first pressure made Jay inhale sharply, and Harris stayed still until the tension left his body. When Jay tipped his hips toward him, Harris pushed farther in, slowly enough to feel Jay yielding around him a little at a time.
By the time Harris was fully inside, their faces were only inches apart.
He didn’t move.
Jay opened his eyes, and for several breaths they simply looked at each other.
Harris had been inside him before. He knew the heat and tightness of his body, knew how easily Jay could turn sex playful or filthy or competitive when that was what he wanted. Tonight none of that seemed necessary.
Jay touched the back of his neck and drew him forward until their foreheads met.
Harris began to move.
Slowly at first, withdrawing almost completely before pressing back in with the same measured depth. Jay’s legs tightened around him. Harris kissed him between strokes, sometimes his mouth, sometimes the corner of it or his cheek when neither bothered correcting the angle.
Every adjustment carried knowledge they had not possessed a week earlier. When Harris’s ribs protested, Jay shifted without being asked and took some of his weight. When Jay’s shoulder tightened, Harris changed the angle immediately. Neither commented on it.
Tenderness had always made Harris feel exposed. Tonight he stopped trying to protect himself from it.
Jay’s hands moved slowly over his back as though memorizing him. Harris felt the intention in the touch and drove deeper before he could think too much about why.
Jay’s breath broke against his mouth.
“Harris.”
Harris kissed him.
Jay said his name again, softer this time, and something inside Harris gave way.
He slowed instead of speeding up, unwilling to let urgency steal any part of it. Jay seemed to understand. He held Harris closer, one hand buried at the nape of his neck while their bodies moved together with a rhythm that felt less like chasing pleasure than resisting the end of it.
Harris knew what tomorrow meant. The equipment would disappear, Jay’s room would empty, and the production van would turn down the ranch road and keep going.
He kept his attention on the body beneath him instead. Jay tightening around him. Jay’s mouth against his. Jay alive and warm and here.
Harris’s control finally began to break. Jay felt it and pulled him closer rather than letting him hide his face. Their foreheads touched again as Harris’s rhythm roughened, the careful pauses disappearing until Jay was breathing hard beneath him.
Harris reached between them, and Jay’s hand closed over his, holding it there while Harris stroked him in time with the movement of his hips.
Jay came first, his body tightening around Harris as his name left him on a broken breath. The sensation pulled Harris after him almost immediately. He drove deep and stayed there, Jay’s arms wrapped around him while the tension moved through both of them.
Neither let go when it was over.
* * *
After Harris dealt with the condom, he came back and lay facing Jay.
Their legs remained tangled beneath the sheet. Harris’s bandaged hand rested between them, and Jay traced one finger along the edge of the dressing before leaving his hand there.
Usually one of them would have said something by now. Tonight they simply looked at each other.
Harris’s expression changed.
Jay saw it happen in the small tightening of his fingers and the way his eyes held Jay’s without retreating.
“Jay.”
His pulse jumped.
Harris swallowed. “I—”
Jay knew.
Worse, he wanted him to finish.
“What happens after me?”
Harris went still. “What?”
“With men.” Jay heard himself rushing and couldn’t seem to stop. “You have a whole new demographic available to you now. That has to be at least a little exciting.”
Harris stared at him.
Jay smiled, aiming for teasing and not quite getting there. “Come on. You’ve spent forty-three years thinking this was mostly theoretical. Now you know it isn’t.”
Whatever had been in Harris’s face a moment earlier was gone.
Jay kept going because letting him return to that unfinished sentence felt more dangerous.
“There are apps, you know. You could explore. Have some adventures.” He made himself smile again. “I expect reports.”
Harris’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Reports.”
“Obviously. I’ve invested considerable time in your personal development.”
The joke landed flat.
Harris looked at him for a long moment. “That what you think I should do?”
Jay’s stomach tightened.
“I think you should get to find out what you want.”
That was true enough to make the lie easier.
Harris looked toward the dark window. “Suppose if I wanted to.”
The words landed harder than Jay had expected.
He had dragged them into the room himself and still wanted to take them back.
“Yeah,” he said, forcing something lighter into his voice. “Exactly.”
After that, the conversation lost its shape.
Jay could not have said later exactly what they talked about.
Something about the drive in the morning.
Something Harris still needed to do around the ranch.
Jay probably made a joke; Harris might even have answered it.
They spoke with the careful ease of two men who had arrived, by mutual implication if not explicit agreement, at the sensible conclusion.
Jay would go back to New York.
Harris would stay here.
Whatever had happened between them belonged to Montana, to the film, to one strange summer that had become much more intense than either of them intended. It had mattered. That did not mean it had to become anything else.
By the time the conversation faded, the story felt almost convincing.
Harris drew Jay against him before they slept, and Jay went without hesitation.
His alarm would sound before dawn. Harris had not asked what time, and Jay had not volunteered. A long goodbye in daylight would only make something temporary harder to leave behind.
That was what Jay told himself, anyway.
The less manageable truth was that if Harris woke beside him and finished the sentence Jay had interrupted, Jay did not know whether every lesson he had learned from Miles would be enough to make him leave.
So he lay awake beneath Harris’s arm and listened to him breathe while the remaining hours quietly disappeared.