When he tried to change the pillows behind Ilan, the younger man finally grabbed him with his good arm and pulled him toward the bed. Fredric put up a superficial fight, but he sagged with relief as Ilan curled the uninjured side of his body around him.
“Listen, old man,” Ilan said, his lips moving against Fredric’s temple. “I am fine. They gave me the good shit, it was a clean break, and I’m not even dizzy.”
“Yes, but,” Fredric said, trying and failing to hide the tremor in his voice, “for the hour I was waiting to find out about all of that—it was so much more.”
“I know,” Ilan said, and Fredric supposed he did—in a sort of abstract way. He’d spent the last several years greeting the family of patients who were—just like him—sitting and dreaming up every worst-case scenario about a loved one. And Fredric knew that sometimes, for some people, the worst case was reality.
It had been for him, once, when he had his stroke. He’d woken up blind, unable to speak, unsure if he’d ever regain full cognition. He’d lost the foundation of his marriage in that one moment, and the confidence that he could be a good father to his children. He’d worked through it, but there were moments he wished he could turn back the clock.
Now that he was lying there in Ilan’s arms, feeling lips brush tender kisses along his hairline, though, he knew that his own case had been far from the worst. The worst would have been dead. The worst would have been him not waking up ever again, and Julian and Corinne forced to be raised by that woman with no one to champion for them.
The worst was the idea of a future where he didn’t have Ilan.
“I spent all morning thinking of ways I was going to convince you to listen to me. To not leave me,” Fredric admitted. His voice was small, and he pressed his words into the side of Ilan’s neck. “I was so angry that night…”
“Because I was a dick,” Ilan said. His hand pushed into Fredric’s hair and ran gentle lines along his scalp. “I’m not ready for you to forgive me yet. I let my insecurity take over, and I didn’t mean to be like her.”
“You weren’t,” Fredric started, but Ilan quieted him with a soft kiss.
“Not exactly like her, but enough,” he said, and Fredric couldn’t really argue, because he’d been thinking that at the time. Ilan had hurt him in ways he hadn’t expected. “I can’t promise it’ll never happen again. This, with you, scares the shit out of me. But it’s also the best thing that’s ever happened to me, so I’m going to try harder than I ever have.”
Fredric pushed up on his arm and pressed his hand to Ilan’s face, tilting it toward his so he could take the kiss he’d been desperate for since the moment he touched Ilan’s hand in the hospital bed. It was possessive and needy, and full of heat and relief and the last vestiges of fear that would linger for a while.
He let his heart beat to the rhythm of Ilan’s hitching breath, and when he finally had to pull away, he nosed along his cheek and breathed him in. He didn’t smell like himself. He smelled like surgery, like hospital. But he was very warm, and very real, and so very alive.
“I have something for you,” Fredric said into the silence. He pushed up, and Ilan let him go with a reluctant drag of fingers. It didn’t take him long to find the bag—which was nowhere as neat and put together as it had been when Brian wrapped it, but he didn’t care. He pushed it into Ilan’s lap, then curled up on the bed next to him and listened to the paper rustle.
“I…what.” Ilan cleared his throat. “When did you have this done?”
“Yesterday,” Fredric said, his voice soft. “I know you don’t do gifts for Chanukah, but I went into Brian’s shop and he printed them for me. I thought…for your office. But only if you wanted people to see them.”
Ilan was quiet for so long, Fredric felt tendrils of panic licking at him. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything. I love you,” he said, and he felt Ilan go very still. “And I know you know that. I’ve loved you for most of your life. But it’s evolved into something that’s entirely new for me. I’ve never felt anything like this before, and I never want to feel it with anyone else ever again. I’m in love with you,” he said, “which is such an inadequate way to say it—but that’s all I have.”
“Papa,” Ilan breathed out, and the bag rustled as he shoved it aside so he could take Fredric into his arms.
“Just promise me you’ll stop calling me that in front of Julian once we tell him,” Fredric said with a laugh, turning his neck to give Ilan access to his flushed skin.
Ilan nipped the edge of his jaw, all teeth with his grin. “You never want me to have fun.”
Fredric pressed a hand to the center of his chest and held it there. “If I promise to make it up to you?”
Ilan sighed, but he pulled Fredric in for another kiss, then spoke against his lips. “I love you. I’ve always loved you. And I always will.”
For the first time in a short eternity, Fredric felt like he could take a full breath. He paused in the doorway, listening to the even in and out of Ilan’s medicated sleep, then he stepped out and eased the door shut with a barely-there click. His body was humming with anticipation, though his limbs were still sleep-heavy, but his son was waiting for him in the living room.
Fredric had passed out in Ilan’s arms and woke only when a hand gently shook him. “Dad.”
Julian had offered him a few moments to wake, and Fredric tried to stamp out the anxiety flooding him, because there was no way to deny what Julian had seen. He curled his hands into fists, then released them and made his way into the living room where Julian said he’d be waiting.
“I’m on the sofa,” came his son’s voice.
Fredric felt a punch of grief at how long it had been since Julian was close by, and he made his way over, clumsy from his fatigue as he clipped the edge of the table with his shin. He rubbed at it for a second as he sat, then opened his arms and took his son into the embrace he’d wanted to give for months.
“I’m glad you’re here, even if you didn’t need to come all this way for a broken arm,” Fredric told him.
Julian squeezed him tight. “Don’t try to pretend like this could have gone any other way.” He released him, but he kept his fingers wrapped around Fredric’s wrist—his version of eye-contact, which Fredric sorely needed in that moment. “I only wish you’d told me sooner. About the two of you.”
Fredric bowed his face toward his knees. “It’s been a source of…contention,” he said slowly. “Between us.”
“Was he afraid I was going to punch him in the face?”
At the sound of Julian’s flat tone, Fredric couldn’t help his laugh. “Something like that.”
“He deserves it for keeping it from me. But…I…” Julian was quiet a long time. “I honestly don’t know what to say.”
“It wasn’t anything either of us expected,” Fredric told him. He laid his hand on Julian’s, then sat back against the cushions, and his back let out a small twitch of relief. “It crept up on me.”