“Sounds like you’ve been there,” he muttered.
“I have not,” Theo corrected, using gauze to smear antibiotic ointment on the wet, almost bloodless wound. God, this could not be good. “But I’m starting to understand you. Any man who would fall out of a helicopter to rescue a guy but does this much work to drop dead before they can know each other is the kind of guy who’d make breakfast but who wouldn’t ask you out to dinner. I’ve avoided that kind of thing my whole life.”
“I was right,” Spencer said, his breath coming faster, which was Theo’s only indication that he was in some real pain. “You are destined for picket fences.”
“I was conceived on a beautiful Christmas morning,” Theo told him, his movements as clean and efficient as possible. If he paused, even for a moment, his hands would be shaking too hard to do this right, and Spencer needed him even if he didn’t want to. “Before the sun even came up, when my parents could see the moonlight on the snow under the stars, in their first apartment in Colorado, before they moved to Tucson. My mom told that story every birthday—not the particulars you know, just that I was a beautiful moment. Even when I knew I was gay and I wasn’t going to be making any babies by a moonlit window, I remembered that. Sex is supposed to be beautiful.”
“Wow, Woodchuck,” Spencer said gruffly. “Take all the fun out of it.”
“It can still be fun,” Theo told him, because he’d had enough time to give this a lot of thought. “And I don’t expect choirs of angels and rainbows and unicorns, particularly not the first time. But I’ll be damned if it doesn’t mean something. Even if the relationship doesn’t last, remembering that you cared about someone—that needs to leave a mark.”
He finished the loose bandage and spread another foil blanket over Spencer’s lower body, making sure there was some air between leg and blanket. If Spencer was going to have any hope at all of keeping that limb, it was going to need to stay as dry as possible for a while. He finished up and checked Spencer’s face, surprised to see his eyes were open and fixed on Theo.
“What?” he asked, uncomfortable suddenly.
“You’re a virgin,” Spencer said, and Theo rolled his eyes.
“That’s your takeaway?”
“Don’t… don’t kiss me again, okay?” Spencer said, and the hurt in his voice was unmistakable.
Theo glared at him. “I’m not making any promises,” he said stubbornly. “What’s the matter, Spencer? Afraid it will mean something?”
Spencer looked away, and Theo caught his breath.
“You are,” he said. “You are desperately afraid it will mean something.”
“Shut up,” Spencer said thickly. “I’m not doing this.”
“Yeah, you are.” Theo was so mad at him. Looking at the wound, his fever… his kindness. Theo wasn’t going to let him wander away—not after seeing what a terrible job he did of taking care of himself. “You and me are doing this. We’re going to get rescued, and I’m going to be there when you wake up, and if I have to dump soup down your throat with a funnel, I’m going to make you own up to some emotional honesty in the middle of all your bulldookie, Spencer Helmsley, because nobody falls out of a helicopter for me and doesn’t get some follow-through.”
Spencer closed his eyes—probably because he felt like hell, Theo acknowledged, but also, probably, because he was at a loss. Well, too bad. Everything Theo owned in the world had likely just been blasted out of this valley and over the edge of the canyon, and all Theo had left was the knowledge that his parents had taught him right and people were meant to be there for each other.
If Spencer happened to be on the receiving end of that, so be it.
Theo had enough time to clean up and dispose of the mess back in the hazmat bag in the ice chest when Spencer finally spoke again.
“I’m not sleeping with anyone who says bulldookie.”
Theo chuckled. “If it’ll make you feel better, I can say bullshit once in a while, when you really peeve me off.”
“So, every five minutes? ’Cause that’d be awkward. Probably better not.”
Theo felt some heat welling up in his chest. Some hope. “For all you know, I am everything you’ve been missing in the sack and have been afraid to ask for, my friend. But I’ll let you get used to the idea.”
Spencer snorted. “Yeah, what are you? Thirty? By the time you’re ready to lose your V-card, I’ll be dead. Me and my German shepherd.”
“I’m twenty-four!” Theo retorted, wounded to his balls. Testicles. Whatever.
Spencer shot his gaze to Theo’s face, and Theo realized that he’d probably looked better. In fact he’d probably looked better after waking up with the flu, or rolling around wet in a bed of pine needles, or, hey, that one time he’d taken the youth group camping and they’d ended up sliding down a hill and ending up coated in pine sap and some weird sort of fungus.
“I swear I’m sort of hot when I’m not half-drowned,” he said, feeling pathetic.
“You look fine!” Spencer retorted. “But I feel like a cradle robber! Fantastic. What’d you do today, Spencer? I fell out of a helicopter, steered a porch through a flood, and came on to a teenager!”
“I’m twenty-four!”
“Yeah. That’s better. Go ahead. Wait for the helicopter. Leave me here to die.”
Theo resisted the urge to kick him. “Oh my God. If you don’t shut up, I’m going to kill you myself.”
Spencer let out a low chuckle. “And see, Junior Woodchuck, that’s why you and I would never wo—”
Theo fell to his knees in the rain and took Spencer’s fool mouth in a hard, punishing kiss. Twenty-four years of yearning for someone to connect with, twenty-four years of hoping against hope that someone would come to rescue him from the wilds of Oregon and the life he’d chosen for himself, and this man literally fell out of the sky. And now his own stubbornness was going to kill them both.
No. Spencer was convinced his friends would come back for them—Theo would take them on faith.
But Spencer needed to believe in something too, and right now, Spencer’s mouth yielding to his own, Theo demanded that Spencer believe in them.
And Spencer’s mouth did yield. He opened for Theo, let him in, accepted his tongue, his invasion, his demands. Theo brought his hands up to cup Spencer’s cheeks, and the heat, of everything, pulled him gently back.
“You are sick,” Theo whispered hoarsely. “And for the record, I’m coming on to you.”
Spencer closed his eyes. “If I agree I’m not doing so hot, will you forget this thing between us? Woodchuck, I am not forever material. I am not a good experience. I’m… I’m a used condom and an alternative to politics on TV—and I’m fine with that.”
“Spencer, nobody’s fine with that,” Theo said, pushing Spencer’s hair back from his face. “Nobody’s fine with being lonely. I should know.”
Spencer whimpered a little—probably not voluntarily—and shuddered under his blankets. Theo pressed their lips together one more time, then stood, checked the knot on the garden hose—it kept threatening to expand and untie—and cleaned up the cluttered deck. He noted with a little twist of his lips that Thelma’s garbage bag of pictures was still bungee corded to the ice chest before he squatted down to organize the contents again, making sure the waste bags were sealed and the remaining dressing and antibiotic ointment was safe and dry. He spotted the ibuprofen bottle again and snagged that for his pocket, and then the bottle of amoxicillin that he’d been looking for.