Everyone Needs a Little TLC (14 parts) COMPLETE - M/M

[Arty]

H...he called him baby!!!!!!!! And was called mom in return?!

*grave starts shaking and pops out zombie me with unicorns*

[Subtly Clashing Wishes]

Awww! They're getting very cute. Love how the terms of endearment keep slipping in.

[starpollen]

Hello all! I am so glad you are enjoying this smarmy H/C story!! I'm back to school this week, so I hope that won't make me lose focus on writing, but if you will have patience I will try my very best to finish the next few chapters!

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PART 12:

While he showered, I started a load of laundry and went to the bathroom attached to my bedroom and had a shower of my own. I had put Bayle in the hall bath when we first got to my house because it was closer to the front door, and now I had started thinking of it has ‘his’ bathroom. As if he were staying. As if he really were ‘mine…’

My chest suddenly hurt, like being punched. I pushed the thoughts away as the hard, hot spray pounded my back.

After we were both clean, I tucked him up in the nest of blankets with The Shawshank Redemption, got a cup of coffee, and went into my office. I deliberately avoided him, using the time to pay bills on my laptop and read up on all my friends’ Facebook updates.

I could hear the movie, so I knew when it was coming to an end. As Morgan Freeman began his final monologue about hope, I dragged myself from my desk and put the laundry in the dryer before slowly wandering into the living room, keeping my eyes fixed on the image of two men embracing on a sandy beach.

I deliberately avoided looking at Bayle, but even though I didn’t allow my eyes to rake over the blond as he lay curled among blankets dotted with white balls of used tissues, my entire body was aware of him. Like feeling heat from a fire even though your back is turned.

When the credits started rolling, I popped in The Matrix, then started back toward my office to hide.

I allowed myself only one peek toward the couch.

And froze.

Bayle was staring at the TV, tears making slow tracks down his cheeks.

I was at his side before I knew I’d moved.

“Hey,” I murmured softly, hands cupping his face and bringing those soulful eyes up to mine. “What’s wrong?”

“He got out,” Bayle whispered in a dull, flat voice, not seeming to really see me.

“The guy in the movie?” I asked, keeping my voice that same soft, gentle tone that hopefully wouldn’t jolt him back to reality. I wasn’t sure whether he was talking about Tim Robbins or Morgan Freeman, or something else completely.

The younger man nodded, too-blue eyes glazed, too-wide and unblinking. “He got out.”

It was then that I noticed that his words were clearer, the congestion momentarily absent. But his cheeks burned under my hands, fever rising.

More tears spilled over the banks of his mountain-lake eyes, trickling down to hang in precarious drops from his sculpted jaw.

I didn’t ask. Instead, I simply slipped into the blanket nest beside him, pulling him half-across my lap and into my arms. Tucking his head in the curve of my neck where it fit so perfectly, I ignored the heat produced by his body combined with the blankets that was making me start to sweat.

I just held him.

Bayle didn’t say anything else, simply lay against me, the only evidence of his acceptance or rejection of my presence the way his pale hands gripped the front of my shirt in a white-knuckled grip, as if afraid I would disappear.

I rubbed his arm, his back, his neck, every once in a while squeezing his shoulders within the circle of my arms and brushing my lips against the top of his head. Together, we watched Neo and Trinity discover an alternate reality as they struggled to save humanity, neither one of us saying a word.

I hadn’t seen this movie in a long time, but to be honest I wasn’t paying much attention to it. Nearly all my focus was on the hard, hot body in my arms. But other than the silent tears and rising heat, Bayle seemed to be better. His breathing was easy and light, coughs infrequent, and sneezing fits in remission.

Not that he didn’t sneeze. Like his coughs, they came every 15-20 min almost like clockwork. But they weren’t the wrenching, exhausting things they had been.

When one came, those sapphire eyes slowly, hypnotically, went glassy and vague. His mauve lips parted in a soft, helpless gasp, pale fingers rising and hovering uncertainly in front of his face for a brief, agonizing moment...

“hh-ehZDsch! –u”

“…bless you.”

“Mm.”

Then he would settle back against me with a few light sniffles, refusing my offer of tissues with a small shake of his shaggy head.

After about an hour, I raised one thumb and ran it over the crest of his cheekbone, feeling the tears long dried, him simply laying contentedly against me. His skin was cooler, nearly normal in temperature. The wonders of modern medicine.

I had always told people that if I could have any superpower it would be invisibility: so I could walk into banks and take money without anybody knowing it was me. But in this moment? I would have given anything to read minds.

To know what Bayle was thinking.

When this last movie was over, I heated up two cans of soup - chicken noodle and tomato - and made toast and grilled cheese. Tomato and grilled cheese for me, chicken noodle and toast for Bayle. He ate silently, drinking another mug of honeyed tea and a big glass of orange juice.

I needed to go to the store: we were officially out of orange juice and soup, and would soon be down to our last box of tissues.

After putting the dishes in the sink, I tucked Bayle back onto the couch with another dose of medicine and the remote so he could surf through the channels and watch whatever he wanted.

“I’ve got to go to the store,” I explained when I shrugged into my jacket and his golden brows rose, questioning. “We’re out of soup and OJ and you’re gonna need more tissues soon.”

As if the mention of the word ‘tissues’ conjured it, his expression collapsed once more in irritation. One side of his upper lip curled, exposing even, white teeth. His brow furrowed, one eye a little more closed than the other as he seemed to try to stare his rebellious nose into submission. It paid him no attention, nostrils stretching into a single, wide flare as his breath hitched just once: "ahh!... -kNGzt'SCH! -eh." His face snapped down and to the side, shoulders shaking, but before it even finished his lean body convulsed yet again with a helpless, wet double: “Hpp't-gntZCHu! -eh. Hgk-nxZTCHiu!

I passed him a handful of tissues. “My point,” I grinned, mussing his shaggy blond hair as he blew his nose. “I’ll be back soon.”

As I went to step away, he snagged my hand. Jerking to a stop, I looked over my shoulder. His neck and cheeks were flushed red – from embarrassment? – and he wouldn’t meet my gaze. He simply squeezed my hand and then let it go.

‘Thank you?’… ‘Come back soon?’...

I definitely needed more lessons before I could adequately speak ‘Bayle.’

In either case, I hurried to the closest store – our competitor, Walgreens, but I didn’t care – and stocked up on overpriced cold-fighting supplies. It was one of those moments where you go into the store for 3 things and come out with 30.

Enough boxes of tissues to build a fort, ten cans of soup, two loaves of bread, two bottles of orange juice, two honey bears, two more boxes of herbal tea, more throat drops, another family-sized bottle of Tylenol, another jar of Vicks, a couple of gel cold packs I could keep in the fridge for fever, a box of big menthol tablets that dissolved in the shower... (I’d never tried one of those before, but I was willing to invest in anything that might help keep his airways open…)

I didn’t even flinch at the total on the receipt.

Once I got home, I parked in the back and unloaded everything directly into the kitchen. It took only moments to put everything out on the counter where I could get to it easily, and then once again deposit a box of tissues in every room.

I had just finished stacking the rest of the tissue boxes in the linen closet in the hall when I turned to find Bayle standing there, looking at me.

“Bayle!” I barked, jumping nearly a mile. “Shit, you startled me.”

The look in his face was intense, determined, and even a little bit... afraid?... As if he had spent the time I was gone contemplating something important, and had come to a decision what he was going to do about it.

His shoulders were bouncing with small, nervous breaths, sapphire gaze flicking nervously from my own brown eyes to my mouth. My attention fixed on his full, supple mouth as his dark pink tongue flicked out to briefly – nervously – moisten his lips as his eyes played a furious match of ping-pong on my body.

Back and forth, back and forth… my eyes, my mouth… my eyes, my mouth…

And then… he pounced.

Rough palms cupped my face, petal-soft lips dragged across the expanse of my own as the rough rasp of an unshaven chin chaffed mine. His hard body pressed against me, slamming me back against the door of the linen cupboard as his tongue plundered the depths of my open, stunned mouth.

He was kissing me. Ohgod, Baylewaskissingme…

Electric shock of ten thousand volts, fireworks shooting explosions through every blood vessel and skin cell in my body, tiny nerve endings dancing with a thousand miniature seizures as I was born and died and was born again…

The kiss wasn’t soft. It was demanding and violent, tongues tangling, no hope of breaking away. It grew wilder, my bones singing with a kind of craving I’d never experienced.

I tasted the wild sweetness of him – tea and honey and a spicy tang that was simply ‘Bayle.’ Our hands tugged at clothes, searching out skin… the scent of him filling the air around me, like warm spice and wild grass. Nothing in the world existed but the two of us, touching, kissing, his shorter body pressing into mine, fitting in all the right places...

An inarticulate sound broke from the back of my throat as his thumb brushed across my hip bone under the waist of my pants. My hands tangled in his hair, groaning into his mouth.

His lips worked their way down my corded throat, nibbling on my collarbone before wending their way back up to my kiss-swollen mouth.

But the blond was wheezing again, high and tight, gasping for breath in between desperate, starved kisses.

It took every ounce of willpower I had to stop, but not before my mouth laved his lower lip one last time, tugging it lightly as my head drew back.

He gave a frustrated mewl of dissent.

“Slow down, love,” I panted, my fingers still entwined in his hair, our foreheads pressed together. “I want you… God, I want you… but I want to wait until you’re better before having my wicked way with you. Right now you’d only pass out or die, and that would take an awful lot of the fun out of it for me.”

He looked like he wanted to protest more... but his body betrayed him. Breath hitching, his lust-glazed sapphire eyes squeezed closed as his chin quivered wildly. He twisted to one side and brought the crook of his arm up to hover near his face:

"--iihhh…. kiihghh!… eh'knxgggssc'hhuu!…ahh," his body folded nearly in half, face disappearing behind his arm. "--snkt! Huh!... Huuuhhh'ppxkscchggeiuu!… hahhhh."

They scraped up from his toes, shuddering powerfully through his lean, muscled frame. He gave a flurry of desperate, completely useless sniffles, trying to stem the flow the sneezes had created.

“You prove my point,” I chuckled darkly, trailing one hand down the back of his neck and pressing a not-so-chaste kiss to his temple. “Come on, let’s get some tissues for that poor, adorable cold-ridden nose of yours.”

Edited August 10, 2015 by starpollen

[Subtly Clashing Wishes]

Oh hotness and not from a fever!

I am all in favor of school, but I'm going to hope you find time to continue this fic.

[Arty]

*zombie groans for ten hours&

[truth]

"An inarticulate sound broke from the back of my throat" describes me perfectly right now.

[Tantrums]

that was absolutely adorable, like yes, yes yes yes yes yes

[StaraiRoalanstjay]

This is such a beautiful story! Please update again soon!!!

[Juto]

OMG you tease, you!!! A snippet of what we have all been waiting for only to have it snatched away again.... More please. Please. PLEASE!!!!

[BurgundyJayne]

Holy wow.

[tarotgal]

I had so many plans this evening and they all flew straight out the window when I started reading. My God is this hot. And it's also so beautifully written it makes me want to give up my attempts at writing and just read this over and over again. I don't read a lot of WIPs (so painful when there's no more to read) but I SO look forward to more of this. Both characters are interesting and complex. I love the humor and the care-giving and the brokenness and the freakin' AMAZING sneeze spellings and descriptions. Amazing! I definitely look forward to more.

[smooshi]

I'll just jump on to the bandwagon though I'm (as usual) fashionably late.

Damnnnn. DAAAAAMNNNN. This is. Everything. Damn. *incoherent yelling* Sorry. I can't phrase my thoughts, but wow. You do you. *raises thumbs up awkwardly* *leaves*

[starpollen]

Wow... I just... Wow. Thank you guys SO MUCH for your feedback!!

@ scw - School has started, but I should still have time over this weekend and next week to write. (I hope!)

@ Artygirl22 - ...BRAIIINNNSSS....

@ truth - These boys make me do that a lot! (sigh)

@ Tantrums - Thank you! I'm so glad you like it!

@ StaraiRoalanstjay - Here you go! I hope you enjoy it!

@ Juto07ab - I don't think I've ever been called a tease before!... LOL!... Hope you like this next part!

@ BurgundyJane - Sometimes when you start writing you have an idea of where the characters will end up, what their story is. Other times? Like with these boys?... they surprise you. I didn't know this was how this would go. But I'm so glad you like my boys!

@ tarotgal - Wow. I have been a huge fan of yours FOREVER. (Since, like 1997...) So I can't tell you what it means that you like this. Thank you so much! And YOU should NEVER stop writing!!!

@ smooshi -

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PART 13:

Back to the couch. Tissue after tissue pulled from the box, blow after thick, gurgling blow. I busied myself looking for another DVD for us to watch, giving him time to deal with his rebellious sinuses.

After a long silence, his hoarse rasp floated across the room. “I... I dod’t fall idto bed with jusd adyode...”

“I’m sorry…?” I glanced over my shoulder.

Bayle was sitting on the edge of the sofa, hard body tense. He cleared his throat, clenching pale hands into strong fists. He wasn’t looking at me. “I dod’t wadt you to ged the wrog idea,” the raw voice was slow but steady, insistent. “I’b dot a whore.”

“I never thought you were.” I turned to face him, but stayed where I was, my back to the shelf that housed the DVD collection.

“I did’t wadt you to ged the idea thad I... thad I go to bed with… or kgiss… jusd ady hadsobe stradger who feeds be pbizza ad soubp ad wrabs be id blagkets od his couch to wadch bovies...”

I cocked my head at him.

“Does that happen often?”

I could hear the slight frustration in his voice, one side of his mouth curling in a snarl. “Dno.”

I crossed my arms. “Has it ever happened before?”

“Dnever.”

“Do you expect it to happen again anytime soon?”

His ivory cheeks blushed a blistering red. “With adybody else?... dno.”

“Well.” I turned back to the shelf. “We should be okay, then.”

Another moment of silence. Then a low, bitter laugh, followed by a broken whisper.

“I dod’t deserve you…”

Snatching any random case from the shelf, I stalked across the room. Tossing the unknown DVD on the couch cushions, I knelt in front of the blond, taking his face in both my hands and gazing deeply into stricken, sapphire eyes.

“You do.”

Then I kissed him, slow and sweet.

It was a kiss complete with tenderness, but also with passion and heat. A kiss that assured every good and wicked thing that the angel and devil had been whispering in my ears since I had first laid eyes on him weeks ago. I felt him start to tremble under my hands, my thumbs suddenly damp against his cheeks.

Giving his lower lip one more sweet suckle, I stood and plucked the DVD from where I’d tossed it, turning back to the entertainment unit to give him time to get himself under control again.

In no way did I think Bayle was weak or soft or 'a wuss.' Our interactions at work had already shown me his strength, his inner fire. But he'd had too much change too fast. Illness and confusion. In a strange house without anything that belonged to him. Someone behaving in a way that was contrary to anything he had ever known, completely drowning in the unfamiliar.

It was no wonder he was having a hard time keeping his emotions in check.

The movie I had haphazardly grabbed was The Godfather. I didn’t bother to ask if the younger man had seen it. It’s one of those movies that if you’ve seen it? You will willingly watch it again. And if you haven’t seen it? You must. Non-negotiable.

“This movie happens to be number two on the list of ‘Top 50 Best Guy Movies of All Time,’” I informed him as I adjusted the disc in the tray before it slowly slid into the machine.

“Whad’s nubber ode?” he asked softly, giving some more chesty coughs.

“Dirty Harry.”

“I haved’t seed id.”

“What have you seen?” I muttered teasingly, crossing back to settle next to him on the wide couch, tucking the blankets around him and reaching to settle his body once more to lean against mine.

Instead of answering, he gasped sharply, the corner of a lip lifting tantalizingly in irritation, nostrils flaring wide.

"HH! -Hh’ptXsch! -ah. Hkg-XSCCHu! -”

Bayle’s fist was hovering under his nose. His watery eyes fluttered, nostrils flickering visibly with an urgent, cold-induced tickle.

"heehh-GXNTz'sh-uU!" a long sound that dragged out of him with excruciating slowness. Still holding the fist in place, he sniffled, and I wasn't surprised by the wet sound of it.

I snatched up several tissues, holding them out as he reached to take them from my slightly-trembling hand.

He turned his back to me, leaning away as he tried to pinch-and-wipe his nose into submission.

"Ugh… g-god..." I heard him stammer gruffly, just before his body clenched with yet another, "iyehh?-!... ggy'IHK-ZTTNtsh'iu! --hhh."

This last vicious sneeze quelled the tickle, and he couldn't help but give a thick, productive blow.

“Come here,” I murmured, pulling him back to lay against me, rubbing his upper arm as I kissed the top of his head. Tissues pressed to his nose, he sagged into my warmth with a long, groaning sigh.

“I still dod’t uderstad why you’re so… dice…” he rasped, panting for breath. “You dod’t dnow adythig aboud be.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” I countered, lips fluttering in his hair.

His answer came soft, and hesitant. “I dow you are kgind… ad sbart… ad strog…”

“And I know you are smart,” I responded steadily. “And hard-working. And adorable. Sexy.” Tilting his chin up with my finger, I gave him another soft kiss. “And stronger than I am.”

His eyes squeezed tightly shut, body trembling. “I’b dot…” he whispered brokenly, breath coming in tight gasps as he fought against the tidal wave of emotion.

“You are.”

I kissed him again, fingers curling under his ear to cradle his neck, tongue dipping behind his lips to lightly caress his teeth. He moaned, shuddering, and kissed me back with a hunger that said his mind was begging to believe me, desperate to be the man I thought he was.

The one I knew he was.

But I knew from experience how hard it is to silence the voices you’ve heard your whole life that tell you that you are one way, one thing, one level of worth. How hard it is to believe that you are more, that you are better. That you deserve better.

Oh yes. I knew that so very well.

So I cradled my sick, shuddering rabbit in my arms, hands gently caressing his face, his neck, his hard shoulders, lips dropping tender kisses onto his forehead, his cheeks, his mouth. As Marlon Brando made people offers they couldn’t refuse and bloody horse heads appeared in beds...

Something in both of us that was broken was remade.

For dinner we ordered Chinese – Sweet and Sour Chicken for me, spicy General Tso’s for him – and watched a TV marathon of House, one of my favorite shows. I don’t think Bayle really got into it, but he was happy as long as he was near me, finding ways to have our bodies touch even when we had to have our arms free to eat.

That night when we crawled into my bed together, he reached for me in the dark... And I did what I had promised.

I had my wicked way with him.

Stars imploded. Suns were swept off their axes and came hurtling toward the center of time. Beyond the bed was a sea of ice, the sheets themselves wrinkled magma. Every cell in our bodies gave up any hope of autonomous regulation, uniting in one glorious swell that swept away breath, stopped hearts, and shattered all expectations.

Immortality itself...

We lay together afterwards in the tangled sheets, panting, the scent of our bodies and what we had done with them pervading the air. The blond coughed, wheezing dangerously. I shushed him with whispered nothings, disappearing for a few long heartbeats and returning with medicine and a cool glass of ice water, getting him to take as much as he would.

“Are you…” he panted, sitting on the side of the bed with his feet on the floor as he took a hit from his inhaler. “…sorry?...”

“No,” I growled, kneeling behind him, my mouth descending on the irresistible curve where his neck met his shoulder. “Not even remotely.”

My words blew hot on his skin before my lips began their determined assault, making him shudder with their intensity. My hands came around from behind to press against his hard chest, feeling his shoulders rise and lungs expand with a second hit from the inhaler, holding his breath so the medicine could work its way down into his alveoli and release the constriction.

Bayle blew out a harsh breath, body trembling in my arms. “God, Trav, nobody’s ever made me feel the way you do…”

My lips curved into a smile against the skin behind his ear. “Good.”

“I keep feeling…” he gasped, no longer from the need for air, just from simple need. “…like this is all some dream… like I’m--… g-gonna wake up and find myself… back there…”

I growled again, biting his shoulder as my hands worked their way down his flat stomach, pulling him back from those dark thoughts.

“Never.”

He moaned my name, willingly submitting to me pulling his body underneath mine, quaking with pleasure as I learned every inch of him, making more silent promises to angels and devils in the deepening dark.

The next morning, I woke languid and sated, breathing deep of the scent our combined bodies had made on the sheets. I purred low in my throat, reaching out with my hand for Bayle’s body lying next to mine…

But he was gone.

Edited August 14, 2015 by starpollen

[Arty]

......

.......

.....

*loud zombie vibration noises for ten years! !!*

[Subtly Clashing Wishes]

Noooo! I hope Bayle's in the kitchen making breakfast or something like that, please? What a cliffhanger!

[tarotgal]

He's only up to use the bathroom, right? To take another shower because of the congestion? Right? RIGHT?

Okay, that being said, after his admitting some of his feelings in this chapter, I can completely see Bayle getting overwhelmed and bailing (no pun intended). But... I'm just going to live in denial until the next chapter. He's totally just up to get a fresh box of tissues because he's sneezed his way through the one by the bed. RIGHT?!

*whimpers* Bayle?

Also, what a treat to get the next part so quickly after I devoured the first 12. I'll get used to waiting from now on, but it was awfully nice timing to get me used to the WIP :-) Good luck writing and thanks for sharing such a great story with us :-)

[BurgundyJayne]

The raw emotion and tension are just palpable. I love this kind of stuff.

I can absolutely appreciate that Bayle is terrified of allowing Travin to make him feel safe, his guard is down while he's sick and he is legitimately scared down to his bones of being abandoned. He would rather bolt and do the leaving himself because it would hurt less.

That said, I hope he didn't actually leave.

But I bet he did.

And what a cruel cliffhanger to leave on!!!!! Aaauuugghhhh!!!

[SpookyBoi]

If he did leave Travin should end up sick and miserable but go to work anyway only to see the blonde and in fit of feverish rage get really sad and upset he left...

Cliffhangers drive me nut because I can only imagine what comes next.

[Tantrums]

Oh dang, that was intense and then at the last second slightly infuriating.

[SomethingClever]

STAR. Dang girl, my jaw is on the floor. There's a smiley for that, yes?

ah yes, this little fellow:

I still revisit a certain sexy chef and entremetier on occasion, and I feel like these guys are gonna join that rotation right quick.

[Arty]

If he did leave Travin should end up sick and miserable but go to work anyway only to see the blonde and in fit of feverish rage get really sad and upset he left...

Yeeeeeesssss!

[starpollen]

If he did leave Travin should end up sick and miserable but go to work anyway only to see the blonde and in fit of feverish rage get really sad and upset he left...

Yeeeeeesssss!

Wow, that's a really good idea!... I wish I had thought of that before writing the ending!...

Here you go guys! I have a feeling that these boys are going to make another appearance in future stories. There's a lot more to explore between them. If you liked this story and the French chef story ("Pimient de la Vie") I also have another story around here somewhere that is M/M: "Two Sides of the Same Coin." Those two boys I also like very much

Did anybody else get the title?... (Travin Levi Cohen?... TLC?... )

Hope you enjoy!

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PART 14:

I admit it: I panicked.

“Bayle!” I called, vaulting from the mattress and shoving limbs into various articles of clothing so roughly I’m surprised I didn’t tear something. “Bayle!...”

Careening into the hallway, I nearly collided with him coming out of the bathroom.

“What?” the blond asked, catching my upper arms in his hands and steadying me as he looked anxiously into my face. “What’s wrog??”

My legs almost went out from under me, weak with relief. “Nothing,” I shuddered, closing my eyes and pulling him into my arms. “Ev--… everything’s fine…”

“…okay…” he replied slowly, half muffled into my chest. I had a feeling he knew exactly what I had freaked out about, that way he had of seeing right to the heart of me without me having to say a word.

I let the younger man pull away a little bit before asking, “How are you feeling?”

“Better,” he replied, and indeed he did sound much better. Even though his voice was ravaged and raw from all the coughing he’d done these past couple of days, he sounded much less congested. Bayle’s shaggy wheat hair was mussed, flopping down over his twinkling, mischievous sapphire eyes. “Had to pee fromb all that tea you keep forcig dowd my throat.” His nostrils were painted a savage scarlet, evidence of how much he'd been sneezing. Nostrils that were flaring incessantly, like a rabbit’s. It was adorable.

There was an energy about him now that was much closer to what I had observed when I first met him. Twice as much energy as he’d had the day before.

And his nose was twice as active. Tickly. Sneezy.

"-iihhh!! Hk-KZDSsch! ....hk’GZDschh-uu!” a powerful pair that bent him in half with their force.

"Bless you."

"Thags," he murmured, ducking back into the bathroom to snatch a handful of tissues. He blew his nose, finishing with a couple of rumbling coughs, wincing when they dragged just a little in his chest. Still, this was an improvement. He was getting better.

“What do you wanna do today?” I asked, combing his unruly hair away from his unique face.

A face that suddenly lit up like a Christmas tree. “Movie?”

“Another movie?” I laughed. “You’re not movie-d out?”

And here it came again. The thousand-watt Bayle smile. “Nope.”

“Well, then,” I wrapped an arm around his shorter shoulder, steering him into the living room. “If it is a movie you want? Then a movie you shall have. Your pick this time. I’ll make some eggs, extra spicy.” I brushed another kiss into his hair. “You know how to work the blu ray player?”

He snorted at me, batting my hands away in a clear dismissal.

I spent time in the kitchen scrambling us both eggs: two for me, five for him. I also fried up the last of some bacon I found in the back of the refrigerator drawer, heaping every slice onto the younger man’s plate. What resulted was a huge pile of bacon and eggs that I drizzled with thin lines of ketchup as I had seen him do before, and a crap-ton of hot sauce.

I was gonna need to buy more of that, too.

If he was staying…

His disappearance that morning had scared me shitless. I couldn’t imagine why he would ever want to go back to that horrible house, to that terrifying woman. But people often do things that make no sense to the rest of us, often return to what is familiar simply because it is all they know.

And I didn’t know if he would succumb to that temptation.

Or how I would handle it if he did.

As I handed him his massive plate of eggs, he must have seen something in my face.

“What?” he asked, blue eyes wary.

“Nothing,” I responded, trying to sound casual, sitting beside him and picking at my own scrambled eggs, topped with pickle relish.

“No,” he set his plate down on the coffee table in front of him. “Somethig’s wrog.” He took my plate and set it next to his own before clasping my larger hands in his smaller, pale ones. “Tell me.”

I took a shuddering breath, refusing to meet his gaze.

“Travin.”

Closing my eyes, I whispered. “Bayle, you--… you h-have to tell me about that house.”

I felt the tremble through our linked fingers.

Pulling one of my hands from his grasp, I paused the movie, turning so our knees were barely touching and staring down at our laps.

Neither one of us looked in the other’s eyes, each preparing ourselves for something that we knew was going to be unpleasant for both of us.

Bayle’s breath came in a hard shudder.

“… h-her name is Donna Jo…” he whispered.

Donna Jo??... God, how redneck could you get…

But I kept my comments to myself.

“… s-she… I…” he stammered, obviously floundering on where to start. Finally, a harsh huff of air. “My parents were druggies. When I was a kid, they were always gone… or high… or angry... when I was fifteen my stepdad broke my arm. On purpose. Grabbed my wrist as I was coming in the door, coming home from school… and snapped it around the door frame.”

I was gritting my teeth so hard I was sure I’d crack every filling I had.

But I stayed silent.

“So I left,” he turned his shaggy head, blond hair falling to shield his eyes as he stared off into a corner, probably seeing the past flickering there like an old movie. “I got by for a while. But I had a hard time getting work. You have to have an address to fill out an application, and I didn’t know yet that I could use the addresses of empty houses that were for sale as long as I checked the mail boxes for any letters that came.”

I didn’t know that trick, either. Then again, I had never had to learn it.

“Dorothea found me first,” he continued, shivering hard, hands gripping mine so tight I thought he might fracture something in one of us. “She l-liked… younger… guys…”

I so didn’t want to hear this. I didn’t. But I couldn’t stop him, not when I had asked. Not when he was in the middle like this. Not when I knew stopping him would be a rejection of everything he was, everything he had tried so hard to overcome.

“… and after her there was d-Donna Jo…” he coughed into his shoulder, giving a liquid sniffle that may not have been produced by his cold.

“Why…” my voice broke, and I had to clear my throat to continue. “Why did you… why didn’t you…” I couldn’t seem to find the words for what I was trying to ask.

“Why did I let them?...” he whispered, despondent, shoulders curling inward with listless shame. “Why did I keep going back over and over again?… I… I don’t know.”

There was a heavy pause.

“…I don’t know…” he repeated, sounding so terribly broken and lost.

“…how old are you, Bayle?...” I asked, cringing inwardly in preparation for his response.

“Um… twenty-one? I think?...”

Younger than I had thought. “You think?...”

“I’m pretty sure I was fifteen when I left home. I… um. I don’t know when my birthday is.”

No birthday parties growing up. No one to celebrate the fact that you were alive, to let you know that they were glad you had been born…

“What if… what if someone else comes along…” I couldn’t say what I was most afraid of. What if he saw one of them again, or another woman just like them. Older. Dominant. Familiar.

What would keep him from going back to that?

But his glistening sapphire gaze jerked up to mine, stabbing right down to my soul, hands suddenly gripping mine in a vice grip. “You think I’m stupid?...” his raw voice was harsh, desperate and defensive and derisive. “You think I’m not gonna grab onto this rare and beautiful and incredibly fucking perfect thing I’ve got right in front of me with both hands and hold on with everything I’ve got??...”

I just stared into his eyes, mouth dry, my own demons battering the insides of my skull.

Bayle’s dusky-rose lips pursed into a pout he didn’t even know was sexy as hell. “Travin, I’m … I’ve never met anyone like you. And I know I never will.” One trembling, pale hand rose to shakily brush silk-sheathed-steel knuckles over my cheek. “I’m not going anywhere… Unless… unless you tell me to…”

It was enough. More than enough.

My hands shot out to cage his face, bringing our lips crashing together with a low moan of hunger and fear and relief. Which he echoed, hands fisting into the front of my shirt and gripping hard enough to stretch the fabric taut over my shoulder blades.

Not that the shirt lasted that long.

We repeated our performance from the previous night right there on the couch. It didn’t even occur to me until later that the blinds were wide open.

It’s a good thing my neighbors aren’t too close…

When it was over, we lay entwined like pretzels, blankets cocooning our bare skin, fingers woven together, half watching the movie Bayle had chosen (Star Wars, the original. I knew I liked this man…) interspersed with kisses and touches, unwilling to stray even a foot from each other.

Not even when Bayle’s nose began to expel the remains of his bothersome cold.

"Hh'ZZDschh!"

"Bless you."

"Hk'tsch! –u... ehh?... hh-HH!--"

"Bless you, again."

"Hh! ih'DJZshh! -e'iIIZTsjch!”

"Bless--"

"Will you stop saying that??"

A brief pause. The whisper of a tissue drawn from the box.

"-HA'GZDjshu! Ugh…"

“Bless you.”

The younger man snuggled into my shoulder with a longsuffering sigh, a tissue still pressed to his face. My arm wrapped around his smaller, hard body, drawing him close.

“You sure this is okay?” I whispered, pressing a kiss against the crown of his head.

“Very,” he responded, muffled slightly by the tissue. His head got heavier on my shoulder, finally relaxing completely against me. “Travin, I’m…” his voice became a choked whisper. “…so happy…”

I kissed his hair and smiled through tears. So many of my fears were finally being laid to rest, each touch from his pale fingers erasing another doubt.

“Me, too, baby,” my arms tightened around him, mind whirling with how this whole crazy thing had come about.

Me saving him… and him saving me.

“Me, too.”

~Fin.~

Edited August 16, 2015 by starpollen

[SpookyBoi]

If he did leave Travin should end up sick and miserable but go to work anyway only to see the blonde and in fit of feverish rage get really sad and upset he left...

Yeeeeeesssss!

Wow, that's a really good idea!... I wish I had thought of that before writing the ending!...

Sequel?

Edited August 16, 2015 by Insanity1996

[Juto]

I'm all for that sequel!!

But Starpollen....from the bottom of my heart (which has clearly lost the ability to properly think and comment).

ILOVEIT!ILOVEIT!ILOVEIT!ILOVEIT!ILOVEIT!ILOVEIT!!!!!!!! Omg!!!!! Searching for your other story now...

[Juto]

Here's the link to the other M/M. "Two sides of the same coin". I hope you don't mind me posting it here. If you do, please just let me know and I'll remove it. But seriously, I can't be the only one who wants to read it after this piece of magnificence.

*hoping that a bit suck-up and flattery will produce a sequel* YOU ARE AWESOME!!!!!

http://www.sneezefetishforum.org/index.php?showtopic=37902&hl=