Chapter 4 - Tyler #3
In a daze, Tyler wandered down the hall, bag in hand.
One room was obviously the master suite, with a giant wooden sleigh-bed and heavy furniture.
The next room held a queen-size with a gray comforter.
Tyler felt like he couldn't go one step further.
He dropped on the bed flat on his back. The bag in his hand dangled off the edge, and he briefly thought about making the effort to look inside it and find his meds and food, but it wasn't worth moving.
It wasn't until the bed dipped under Eli's weight that he realized he'd almost drifted off.
“Here.” Eli untangled the plastic handle from his fingers, and peeked inside. “You haven't opened anything. Do you want to just sleep?”
It sounded so good. Just sleep, and sleep, but eventually unless he was lucky enough to die in his sleep he would have to wake up, and then if he hadn't taken any anti-inflammatories he might not make it out of the bed. He raised himself on his elbows with a groan. “Just the Advil.”
“No dice.” Eli grabbed a pillow and stuffed it under Tyler's shoulders. He pulled out a Twinkie. “Here, eat that while I get the bottle open.”
It felt easier to follow directions than to protest. Tyler bit into the totally non-food substance of sponge and sweetness, practically feeling his taste buds go into shock. He watched Eli wrestle the childproof cap off the pill bottle.
Eli raised an eyebrow. “How many?”
“Just give me the bottle.”
“How many?”
“Jesus, you would think it was heroin or something. Six, okay? I need six.” Or more, but not in front of Eli.
Eli wrinkled his nose but handed the pills over. “You're going to get ulcers, you know that. Maybe kidney failure.”
Tyler sighed, and took the Sprite that Eli opened for him with his other hand. “Now I don't have to drug test anymore, I can get better meds.” He tossed the pills in his mouth and washed them down with soda.
“And the perks keep coming.”
“Yeah, that's a good one.”
“Although hopefully once you stop abusing your back, you won't need so much.”
Tyler closed his eyes. “Don't lecture me again. Not tonight.”
“I'm sorry.” Eli shifted closer to him. “Really. I am so sorry about all of this, about you having to give up your dreams. I know what they meant to you. But I'm glad too. Because I've been so scared.”
Tyler opened his eyes to find Eli looking down at him, wearing nothing but a pair of blue boxer-briefs over all that tanned skin.
Eli said, “Every time you came home from the gym moving like an old man and went to the bathroom to pop more pills, I just knew that one day you wouldn't come home and there would be a news story about, 'Olympic gymnast paralyzed in gym accident.'”
“You were moving out.”
“Because I couldn't stay and watch that.”
“As my roommate.”
“As your anything.” Eli shook his head. “You have to be the blindest man in three states if you couldn't see how badly I wanted you...aaand obviously you were blind, because look at that blush.” A small smile transformed Eli's face.
“Make fun of me while I'm down,” Tyler muttered.
“Gladly.” Eli reached out a careful hand and brushed a strand of hair off Tyler's forehead. “I thought maybe you just weren't interested in me.”
“No.” Even that simple touch of skin on skin was electrifying.
“So you are interested?”
“Maybe you're the blind guy.”
Eli hesitated and then leaned in for another kiss, and lips were even better than skin. Tyler opened his mouth, silently asking, but Eli kept the kiss sweet and pulled back much too soon. “So obviously, we need to talk.”
Tyler captured Eli's hand and licked his finger. “You sound like a girl.” The prospect of sex was both scary and breathtaking, and best of all, the way it swamped his senses would keep him from thinking. He’d had a little experience with guys in high school, and remembered the way the smallest touch had made his mind go blank with heat.
With Eli it was bound to be ten times better.
But Eli pulled his hand free slowly. “I'm not...damn. Listen, Tyler, we shouldn’t do anything tonight.”
Tyler thought about Stephen's bet. “Tell me you didn't buy condoms.”
Eli colored, but said steadily, “That has nothing to do with it. You just had a major meltdown and I'm not going to turn around and fuck you for the first time an hour later.”
“Maybe I would fuck you.” Tyler couldn't believe he'd said that, but he kept his eyes on Eli, reaching for him, bold with wanting something, anything but the emptiness he’d been feeling.
“Not tonight.” Eli gasped as Tyler slid a hand down his chest, but he caught Tyler's wrist and continued, “You need to sleep. Then in the morning, we both need to figure out where we go from here.”
“And then you'll kiss me?”
“Yeah. Probably.”
“Okay.” Disappointment and relief battled for supremacy, and relief won out.
Despite that line about fucking, Tyler really had very little idea what he was doing.
Starting something now, with his back aching and his head spinning, and about four hours of sleep in the last two days, was probably a bad idea if he was trying to convince Eli to stay more than one night.
Tyler rolled onto his side away from Eli, trying to keep his back straight.
“Do you want help getting those clothes off?” Eli asked softly.
“Nah.” It was cool in the room, with the AC kicked up to sub-arctic levels.
And a few layers of clothing between his skin and Eli's might be good, if nothing was going to happen.
He forced himself not to curl in a tight ball, as much as he wanted to.
Straight spine. And although he'd sworn he wouldn’t act needy or whine at Eli anymore, he couldn't help asking, “Will you sleep in this bed? I mean, just sleeping.”
“Sure. If you want me to.”
“Please.” The word came out a whisper and he wasn't sure if Eli even heard him, but either way, there was a rustling as Eli pulled the covers down, tugging them out from under Tyler. Then Eli stretched out behind him and covered them both.
For a long time, Tyler hovered on the brink of sleep.
The ibuprofen kicked in and his body slowly relaxed.
But that seemed to just make him more aware of the inches of space between him and Eli.
Without being able to see Eli's face, Tyler found that his brain could come up with all kinds of scenarios where Eli was just humoring him, or sorry for him, or.
.. He refused to roll over, but he did push his ass back just enough to brush against Eli's hip.
The little sexy murmur Eli made was reassuring.
Tyler didn't even realize until Eli's arm came across his chest that he’d begun shaking again, little fine tremors that came and went.
So stupid. Maybe it was neurological, something to do with his back.
But the press of Eli's chest against his back and that warm arm around him worked wonders.
As Tyler let himself drift in the cool, dark room, he heard Eli's voice, soft in his ear. “Sleep, Ty, I've got you.”
***
Tyler woke to a host of unfamiliar sensations.
He wasn't exhausted. His back was barely twinging.
And plastered against his ass was a warm, wonderfully male body, all sleep-heavy and relaxed, from the thigh that lined his own to the arm draped around his waist. For a moment he basked in pleasure-drenched happiness, and then the route he'd taken to get here flashed before him and he tensed, and then moaned.
“That wasn't a good sound,” Eli murmured from behind him. “Painful?”
“No. Not that. Just remembering...”
“Yeah. Rough day.”
“The worst.”
Tyler felt the brush of Eli's lips against his neck and then over the rim of his ear. Eli's hand began to stroke soft, warm circles on his chest. Tyler shuddered in response. That was Eli, touching him. Tyler was caught between wanting to return the touch and not moving for fear of making Eli stop. He reached back slowly, and slid his hand down from Eli’s hip, his fingertips brushing from soft cotton boxer-briefs over the hem to the fuzz of fine hair on skin. He lingered, just touching Eli’s thigh, achingly aware of Eli’s breath against his shoulder.
Eli murmured, “Worst means it has to get better from here on out.”
“You could say th-that.” Tyler wasn't sure if he was laughing or crying, but his wobble made Eli tighten the arm across his chest
“Hush,” Eli whispered into his hair. “It's done. It'll be all right. How do you feel? Do you need anything?”
Tyler rolled over in his arms and moved closer, sliding his hand into Eli's curly hair. “Make me forget. Make me feel good.”
Eli responded to Tyler's fervent kiss but when they separated, his expression seemed sad. “Is that what you want me for?”
Tyler almost said yes, as loudly as he could.
But something made him hesitate and run his words back through his mind.
He paused, and said more slowly, “No. I mean, I do hope you will, um. Yeah. But I need you for...everything.” Damn it, he was an athlete, not a poet.
But for Eli, he wanted to say this right.
“I just need you. I thought the worst thing in my life was standing up and telling the whole country that I quit the Olympic team.
But it's not. The worst thing was before that, when you gave up on me, when you said you were moving out and leaving me to fuck myself up, because you couldn't stand me anymore.”
Eli started the kiss this time, and Tyler was just learning his mouth, his taste, when he pulled back. Tyler whimpered in protest and Eli smiled at him. “I never gave up on you, dummy. I was scared.”
“I'm sorry?”
“It's okay. You're here now.”
Minutes later, Tyler took a breath to ask, “You're not still going on that road trip…are you?”
“Not a chance.” Eli's hands dug into his ass in a satisfying way.
Tyler arched into it. “Are you going to say 'I told you so' a lot?”