She gave a grim smile. “And maybe that’s a blessing. I’ve got to tell you, it’s really hard to get pissed at Tenner for something that isn’t his fault when he looks like a stiff wind is going to knock him over.”
“I am not that pathetic,” Tenner mumbled, setting his chin down on his fists.
Ross blew on him, laughing at his outrage. And as he was laughing, he heard an amazing sound.
Nina was laughing too.
Piper came in and joined them for lunch, everybody being very careful not to breathe on each other. Nina shooed them back into the living room to sit while she cleaned up, and Piper marched in, giving them directions.
“So Ross is going to sit in that corner, and Daddy’s going to lean up against Ross, and I’m going to put a pillow here and lean up against Daddy, and that way I won’t get sick.”
Ross quirked his mouth. “I like this plan.”
“Good, because we’ve been making this plan A all week,” Tenner responded. He yawned into his shoulder and swore. “Darn it. I don’t want to sleep anymore.”
Ross made himself comfy and raised his arm, gratified when Tenner leaned up against him. Well, whether Piper knew what it meant or not, Tenner couldn’t deny that the cow had left that particular barn.
“Okay, Daddy. You and Ross are all cozy. I’ll go get you a blanket.” She disappeared into the guest bedroom and came back with the quilted fleece blanket that usually sat at the foot of Tenner’s bed upstairs. She gave Ross one corner and Tenner the other, and together they huddled under the blanket in absolute perfection.
“Good,” she said. “That’s how you should be.”
She got her coloring books again and sat on Tenner’s other side, singing to herself. Tenner took the remote control and found a station with cartoons on it. Then the two of them slid underwater again, but this time, it was a wee bit warmer.
THE NEXT day they were fever-free and exhausted. Ross told Tenner he hadn’t slept so much since he’d spent sixty hours traveling from Finland to Colombia, then back to the States.
“How did you even know which country you were in?” Tenner asked fuzzily from his accustomed spot on Ross’s chest.
“I had no idea. An airport’s a fucking airport. Unless you’re in Detroit or Dulles, and then it’s a portal to hell, and I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Poor, poor, baby, who gets to travel a lot. Your life must be very hard.”
Ross grimaced slightly at the bitterness. “I keep telling you, I’ll return here.” He had, in fact, already told Jimmy Dowd this. “I mean, you’re giving me something to come back to, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Tenner said unequivocally. And then, because he was Tenner and nothing could be easy or simple with the guy, he added, “But I’m not out to Piper yet, and—”
Ross snorted. “Says you!”
“Fine. I haven’t had the talk with her.”
“The talk. Is that in italics or all caps or in quotation marks or what?”
“Shut up,” Tenner muttered.
“I think we need to make a rule that you can’t use ‘shut up.’”
“Can I use ‘bite me’? Is ‘bite me’ a thing we can use?”
Ross pretended to think. “Only if actual biting will be involved. For example,” he said experimentally, “if I bit you gently on the neck right now, what do you think your reaction would be?”
Tenner also pretended to think about it. “I’d call you a freak and tell you only two-year-olds bite people.”
“And what if I bit you tomorrow?”
More thought. “I would probably bite you back in a potentially sexually pleasing way.”
“Then no—you may not use ‘bite me’ because you do not mean ‘bite me.’ And honestly, you do not, at the moment, want to be bitten. You are going to have to find better words.”
Tenner growled. “I want you to come back,” he said, sounding tired and out of sorts and dear. “I want that more than I think you know. I want that more than I think you even guess. But you are doing something really fucking important. I mean, let’s see, send Ross into the world so my kid can have oxygen when she’s grown, or keep him here with us because I am….” His voice faltered. “I am lonely and sad and grumpy without him and would rather have him here by my side than off in some distant place doing the world good. Which one of these is great for me but bad for the rest of the world? You tell me.”
Ross lowered his head to Tenner’s neck and bit gently, pleased when Tenner didn’t smack him or tell him he was a freak. Instead, he let out a low, pleasured moan, and Ross’s body gave a sleepy response that made taking Tuesday off to have sex seem like the best idea ever.
“Ross!” Tenner argued, squirming against Ross’s body, “this is serious!”
“Yeah, I know.” Ross pulled back and sighed. “Look, I’m not taking the job here because it’s easier than the ones overseas. I’m taking it because getting funding to the places we need in our country is one of my biggest concerns. Cleaning up toxic waste or e-waste takes a lot of money—private citizens can’t do it all. We need to make corporations accountable. And seriously, I had to explain to people how not to kill fish last week. You’d think it would be easy, but somehow, they thought blasting away at the riverbed was going to be all okay fine for the fucking fish. And when I’m done saving the damned fish, I may end up doing a lot of work lobbying for more government money, but I’ll be working for the environmental cleanup company here in Folsom. It’s not a cop-out, Ten. It’s a way to help and to see my family more. And….”
Oh. Oh, this felt unexpectedly bare and vulnerable.
“And that includes you. And Piper. And I know I’m not even ‘Uncle Ross’ to her yet, but she thinks I keep her daddy safe, and I want to be that guy. I… I was thinking about coming back already—I told you that. I just need to give my boss the final okay. This whole week, he hasn’t badgered me about work I haven’t done, or about how I’m a consultant who almost died while on sick leave. No, he’s been asking me to give him the go-ahead to hire me back when this next gig in the Amazon is up. What should I tell him?”
Tenner swallowed. “Tell him….” He buried his face against Ross’s neck. “Tell him your chickenshit boyfriend is terrified that he’s not a good enough reason for you to come back. That every time I think about you leaving, this big black hole opens up in my chest as if you’re going to be gone forever and I’m going to be wondering what I’ve done wrong. And you’re not that guy. I know you’re not that guy. But I yanked ‘happily ever after’ from Nina when she was not expecting it, and I don’t fucking deserve you.”
Oh.
That hadn’t been the answer Ross had been hoping for—or expecting—and for a moment, his throat closed up with hurt.
He took a few deep breaths then, wondering if his heart was going to be able to bounce back from this when he was pretty sure it had shattered on the road outside Tenner’s little suburban mansion, and then some of what Tenner said sank in.