Theo covered Spencer’s hand with his own. “You did,” he said softly.
“I do,” Spencer agreed. He turned his hand over and laced their fingers together. “We made love today, and it was really wonderful. And I never thought I’d do anything that wonderful with another human being. And I want you to stay here. With me. And I want us to make a go of it in this out-of-the-way place with our really awesome jobs and people who care for us. Is that okay?”
Theo squeezed his hand. “My parents died within two years of each other,” he said. “My mom right after I graduated from college and committed myself to living in Sticky, Oregon, to take care of her. After she passed, I just… stayed. I was making a difference. I was happy. But I didn’t expect another gay man to find me out in the middle of nowhere. I certainly didn’t expect one to fall out of the sky. But I didn’t move out here because you fell out of a helicopter for me, or because your family is super awesome—even though they are. I moved out here because you are one of the best men—one of the best people—I have ever met, Spencer Helmsley. I would have been a complete moron to let you go without me when I had a chance to be sitting here in this freezing trailer, holding your hand.”
Spencer laughed a little and tried to pull away to get up and close the door—and to wipe his eyes while he was at it, because this baring your soul stuff wasn’t for the weak and he was damned embarrassed about that.
Theo used his free hand to grab a napkin, though, and he wiped his eyes first, and then, tenderly, he leaned into Spencer’s space and wiped Spencer’s eyes too.
“We made love today,” he said softly. “And it really was fantastic. It was everything I was promised about sex because it was with the right person, and he loves me as much as I love him. Isn’t that right?”
Spencer took a deep shuddering breath. Goddammit. “Yeah,” he whispered. “That’s right.”
And then Theo’s mouth was on his, salty and sweet, warm and safe, and Spencer lost himself in that kiss and found himself too. And then he found Theo and realized they were like that, and maybe always would be, close enough that they would always find each other, because together was how they belonged.
Sunsets and Beer
Six Months Later
“WELL?” Belinda asked, moving about the kitchen smoothly in spite of a growing bulge at her middle. Apparently Caden—who could now run around like a champion, chasing the adolescent orange tabby that Belinda had chosen for their house—had been such a sweetheart that she and Oscar had decided that they must start on a new one immediately.
Theo didn’t mind. He and Spencer had been spending five days a week working the cargo bay and the office for Gecko Inc. and helping Belinda decorate the guest room for little-boy Caden, as opposed to baby Caden, during their weekends. All that was about to change, though, and Theo was only a little anxious as he replied to Belinda’s question.
“Well, what?” But he knew.
“How’d he do?” she asked. Spencer had gone up in the air that day with their local flight certificatory. A one-hour trip, take-off and landing of a small cargo plane, and then the same for a helicopter. It was his final test after a series of them over the month, and Theo grinned at her.
“Can you imagine Spencer failing anything?”
She grinned. “Absolutely not. Yes! This is good. I made him a cake, you know.”
“He’ll be excited. He’s coming back with Damien tonight. In fact….” They both paused while the whomp-whomp-whomp of the Hummingbird’s propellers beat the air to the landing pad on the other side of Damien and Preston’s cottage. “There he is!”
“Are you going to go greet him?” she asked, dimpling. “Dinner’s not for a good two hours—you could go, you know, ask him about his day?”
She insinuated that last with a sweet little blush, and Theo fell in love with her all over again. “I could,” he said. “But it’s getting cold. This could be the last night we get to watch the sunset for quite some time.”
“Oh!” She held her hands to her chest. “Here, let me get you two beers. Colonel’s out tearing up the back by the firepit. You guys can go sit out there.”
Theo gave her a kiss on the cheek and took the beers from her as she pulled them from the refrigerator, and then he whistled for Colonel as he trotted through the back door and into the space between the house and the cottage, which had been designated as sort of a barbecue/common area for the three homesteads.
Once he’d passed that—and Preston and Damien’s cottage—he found Preacher and Colonel sitting and panting while Preston greeted Damien with a long, long hug.
And Theo strode up to Spencer, still in his flight suit, and kissed him square on the mouth.
Ah! Yes! Warm, happy, sarcastic man, with a definite edge of cocky pilot, which had been seeping back into Spencer’s taste over the last months.
Heady stuff, that. Theo couldn’t get enough of it.
“Beer, Woodchuck?” Spencer gasped as he came up for air. “Isn’t that a little forward?”
“The sunset, idiot! Go change out of your flight suit and meet me back here.”
“Oh!” Spencer’s grin went shy, and Theo fell in love with him for the hundredth time since that late March when the idiot had fallen out of the sky. “Okay. Yeah. Sure.”
He kissed Theo one more time for good measure and then turned to trot up the walk toward the trailer. He still had a limp in his stride—much like Damien’s, that would probably never go away. But he had so much of himself back too, and to Theo’s eternal gratitude, that cocky part of him that had gotten so lost after his injury seemed to want Theo as much as the vulnerable part of him that he fought so hard to hide.
“Don’t forget my sweatshirt!” Theo called after him, shivering a little as the October chill settled into the air.
He set the beers in the cup holders of two of the camp chairs by the fire pit, and to his surprise, Preston came over, two big logs in his arms.
“Grab some kindling,” he said, pointing to the small pile of it on the other side of the composite picnic table that he and Damien had installed that summer.
Theo did as asked, and by the time Spencer and Damien got back from changing, they had a cheerful fire going, but that didn’t mean Theo wasn’t grateful for the fleece hoodie Spencer had brought back with him.
Colonel, who had stayed dejectedly by Theo’s side as Spencer had gone to change, greeted him excitedly for a moment before Spencer sank gratefully into the camp chair and petted the animal’s giant head for five minutes, as well as giving scritches and good-dogs and general spoiling and love.
Colonel and Stupid had continued to be an item, snuggling at every opportunity when Colonel was in the house. But Colonel really was a working dog, and he accompanied Theo and Spencer to the hangar most days, to either sit at Theo’s feet while he worked or to follow Spencer as he organized deliveries. And now he’d be going with Spencer and Elsie as they went back to being the inseparable flight buddies they were made to be.
“So!” Theo demanded impatiently. “How’d the helicopter certification go?”