The Tin Box (27 page)

“I have others.”

“Better than puking in your car, I guess.”

“Far better.”

William shut the door and hurried to hide the bike. When he got into the driver’s seat, he handed Colby a half-full bottle of water. “Here. It’s warm, but—”

“Thanks.” Colby took a careful sip from the bottle. “Better.”

“I’ll get you something cold when we get home.”

As William wound around the hillocks and past the curious cows, Colby kept his gaze resolutely forward. “It’s my own damned fault,” he finally said.

“What is?”

“I promised myself I’d stop riding out to the hospital. If I had kept my promise, that fuckwad wouldn’t have run me off the road.”

“You were riding to the hospital?”

Colby’s sigh was long and noisy. “Yeah. Well, riding back. Usually I come later in the day—you were grilling last night; I could smell it. Smelled good. But today’s my day off and… and I’m a moron.”

“But why?” The mix of emotions William had experienced over the past ten minutes was making him slightly dizzy. His body must have been flooded with adrenaline. He slowed the car a little more. The last thing they needed at the moment was another accident.

“It’s part of my master plan to get over you by stalking you, torturing myself, and getting run over by trucks.”

“And… how’s that going?”

“Everything’s right on schedule so far. Except the getting over you part.”

William bit his tongue.

He’d mastered the gate ritual—hop out of the car, unlock and push, hop in, drive, hop out, push and relock, then hop in—so it took less than sixty seconds. If there was ever an Olympic gate unlocking event, he was a contender for the gold.

He parked as close to the main entrance as possible, parallel with the curb so Colby would have a step or two fewer to take. Colby opened the car door by himself but William helped him get out. He assisted Colby into the building, down the hall, and to the armchair in his apartment.

“I’ll get it dirty,” Colby protested.

“It’s leather. It’ll wipe clean.”

Colby nodded, but before he sat down, he toed off his shoes and peeled off his shirt. “Um. Could you help me with the shorts? I think I barfed on them. But if I try to take them off myself—”

“No problem.” And it
wasn’t
a problem, except that kneeling in front of Colby and painstakingly drawing the cutoffs down his smooth, muscular legs sent all the blood in William’s body straight to his groin. At least Colby was wearing briefs, although the tight scrap of red fabric left very little to the imagination.
Focus
, William told himself sternly.
You’re supposed to be patching him up.

But it didn’t help at all when Colby balanced himself on one leg, using William’s head for support, and then laughed.

William looked up at him. “What?”

“You finished your dissertation, right? So now you’re not just playing doctor—you really are Dr. Lyon.”

“I don’t get the degree until December.”

“
Pfft
. Technicality.”

As soon as the shorts were off, Colby collapsed heavily into the chair. He was still clutching William’s ruined T-shirt in one hand, and now he spread it back across his lap.

“I don’t have Coke,” William said. “Beer? Water? Iced tea?”

“Iced tea. With lemon?” Colby added with a curve of his lips.

“Of course, monsieur.” William executed a deep bow. He grabbed the soiled clothes and hurried to the bathroom, where he chucked them into the washing machine. Colby could wear something of his for the ride home. He gathered his first aid kit and a couple of clean towels, then snagged a metal basin from the kitchen and filled it with warm, soapy water. He washed his hands and poured tea for Colby. The lemon was already pre-sliced and waiting in the fridge; he plunked a piece into the glass. He was pleased when he managed to get everything back to the chair without dropping or spilling.

Colby took the tea and had a long swallow. “Ah. Perfect. Is that a bedpan?”

“I think so. I found it in a dorm. When I grill, I like to keep it nearby, filled with water, just in case a spark escapes. The grass is really dry.” As he spoke, William knelt, removed the shirt from Colby’s lap, and began gingerly dabbing at his knees with a damp towel. “I don’t want to burn the whole place down. That would make me a pretty poor caretaker.”

Colby had his eyes squeezed shut. “How’s your project going? The book.”

“Really well. It’s hard to narrow things down. There are so many stories I want to tell. And most of them are going to require a lot of research besides the files. Backgrounds, follow-ups, that kind of thing.”

“You like research.”

William winced as he loosened some bits of embedded gravel from Colby’s flesh. “I do. During my defense, the committee asked about my future research plans and I talked about this project. I was a little worried what they’d say. But then Dr. Ochoa pointed out that I’m still researching memory, just in a very different sort of way.”

“None of your neat little tables of numbers.”

“Nope. But he said subjective approaches can be as valuable as objective ones. More valuable, sometimes. And I think he’s right.” Satisfied that the first knee was clean, William turned his attention to the other. He needed to keep talking to distract himself a little, because there was something incredibly intimate about touching Colby this way. “I think the work I’m doing now is going to have a much bigger impact than my serial recall crap.”

Colby ruffled William’s hair. “It’s not crap.”

“No, it was good work. But the work I’m doing now really matters.”

Colby hissed as William used tweezers to pluck a bit of broken glass from his skin. He didn’t faint or vomit again, but his voice sounded strained when he spoke. “Did you find Bill’s file?”

“I… yes.”

“And?”

“We don’t have to talk about it.”

“I want to know. I’ve been thinking about it all this time. Wondering.”

William looked up at him. “They performed the lobotomy. It… didn’t go well. He never left here again.”

“Jesus.”

Colby was silent as William used a cotton swab to dot antiseptic cream onto the scrapes. The injuries weren’t deep or serious, but they’d be uncomfortable for a couple of days. He reached for large adhesive bandages.

“I hate Johnny!” Colby suddenly cried.

William looked at him in surprise. “Really?”

“The bastard totally deserted Bill.”

“But Bill was committed here by a judge. Johnny wasn’t a relative. He couldn’t just walk in and take Bill away.”

“I don’t care. He could have done
something
if he tried hard enough.”

William had already thought about this. He’d even made some efforts to track the man down, but John Taylor was far too common a name. “Maybe he did try, Colby. And there’s a really good chance he went off to war. Or maybe he didn’t realize how seriously Bill took their situation. Maybe from Johnny’s point of view, they were just having a little fling.”

“I don’t care. I hate him. You don’t just abandon—” Colby stopped and turned his head away.

William carefully adhered the bandages to Colby’s knees. “Be right back,” he said. He stood, gathered his supplies, and took them into the bathroom. But as he was about to put the dirty towels into the washer, he saw Colby’s clothing. And without stopping to think, he stripped off his own shorts and pulled on Colby’s cut-offs and shirt. They smelled of sweat and grass and, yes, faintly of vomit. He didn’t care.

Colby was poking warily at his bandages but looked up when William stopped in the middle of the room. Colby’s mouth dropped open. “Will….”

“Yes?”

“Those are my clothes.”

“Yes.”

“They’re stinky.”

“A little.”

Colby cocked his head to the side. “They look really silly on you.”

“I’m not a total dance whore?”

“You’re…. Will, what the hell are you doing?”

“Making a speech. So shut up.”

Colby blinked at him, very nearly grinned, and then leaned back in the chair. He gave William a
go ahead
gesture.

William cleared his throat. “Okay. I did research. I watched porn and I went back to the Stockyard. I gathered a significant amount of data, and I can assume with less than a point-oh-five margin of probability of error that my conclusion is sound. I’m rejecting the null hypothesis, Colby.
You
are my type.”

“But—”

“Shh. Not done yet.” William hadn’t prepared for this at all, but it was much more important to him than his dissertation defense had been. “You are my type. And I have also concluded, after further consideration, that I love you. I think maybe you love me too—the preliminary data support those results—but we’ll need future research to explore that.”

“I do,” Colby whispered.

William’s heart soared. “Well, see? Another hypothesis confirmed.”

“But I
told
you. You need to look around.” Colby narrowed his eyes and pointed accusingly. “I bet you haven’t slept with a single other guy!”

“I got groped by a couple of them at the Stockyard.”

“That’s not—”

“You gave
me
a speech, not long after we met. You said gay people—any people—should be who they really are. Be authentic. You said I should wear a pink tutu and vote Republican if that’s what I wanted. Well, I’ll pass on that part. But Colby, this is me. I’m not a man who sleeps around, always wondering if the ass is greener on the other side of the fence. I’m not someone who wants to meet tons of men in clubs or online. Those things don’t suit me any better than this outfit.” He gestured at his borrowed shirt. “I turned thirty-three today. I may be newly out of the closet but I’m not a kid. I wasted enough time trying to be William Lyon, heterosexual. I’m ready to be Will Lyon, gay. Partner of Colby Anderson.
That’s
who I really am.”

Colby stared at him for several moments. “Today’s your birthday?” he finally said.

“Yes. But you’re really missing the point—” William stopped and rushed to the chair to help Colby, who was struggling to stand.

As soon as Colby was upright, he wrapped his arms around William in an embrace so tight William could barely breathe. “Happy birthday, Will. Can I give you a present?”

“What?”

“Me.”

The final remaining molecules of oxygen flew out of William’s lungs and he could only answer with a return hug.

Colby’s face was buried against William’s shoulder. “If you accept this gift, there are no returns. No exchanges.”

“God, Colby. You think I’d ever let you go? That would be insane.”

What followed was nothing like William had once imagined gay sex would be. For one thing, they had to be careful of Colby’s injured knees. And for another, they both kept laughing—at their attempts to find positions that wouldn’t hurt Colby, at discovering each other’s ticklish spots, at the books knocked off the nightstand by a flailing arm. But even more than that, they laughed with joy.

Colby ended up ripping his tank top right off William’s back. All in all, not such a great loss, William concluded later. At the time, though, William was trying to touch and taste every inch of Colby’s skin. Colby’s briefs ended up on a shelf. His shorts—which William had been wearing—flew across the room to land in the middle of the floor. They were joined a moment later by a pair of blue boxer briefs.

And Colby was golden and radiant, his muscles smooth as ever, his body perfect even where it was covered by bandages or smudges of dirt. William found a few scrapes on Colby’s palms and kissed them better. He also kissed each tightened nipple, the ridges of Colby’s abs, the round navel, the wonderful little indentations under each hipbone. Colby had let his pubic hair grow back—it was soft and springy—and William kissed it as well. He kissed the insides of Colby’s thighs. He kissed the sweet roundness of Colby’s balls. And then he kissed the slightly damp tip of Colby’s red glans.

“Oh,” said Colby as William licked his shaft. “But it’s your birthday.”

“And this is my birthday treat. Never liked cake anyway.” William slipped his mouth over the crown.

Colby’s cock seemed bigger in his mouth than it looked. It felt smooth and slippery, very solid against the roof of his mouth and between his lips. William liked how it was hard and penetrative and yet acutely vulnerable. He liked the taste. Colby spread his legs wide, so William used a damp fingertip to trace behind Colby’s scrotum and then, very gently, around his hole. And William
loved
the sounds Colby made at that, the desperate, half-voiced moans. He loved the tension in Colby’s muscles as Colby struggled not to thrust.

William couldn’t take Colby very deep, but Colby didn’t seem to mind. He held on to William’s hair with both hands and panted. And then, very suddenly, he pushed William’s shoulders. “Too close,” Colby said with a grin. “Come here.”

After squirming up the mattress, William ended up on his left side with Colby pushed back tight against him. Colby reached between his legs, took hold of William’s cock, and arranged it so it would slide between his thighs and bump against his scrotum. When William responded by wrapping his fingers around Colby’s wet cock, Colby made an approving sound and grabbed William’s fist.

They found a rhythm together. The heat and the friction were incredible. But what was even better for William was the knowledge that he held Colby in his arms, and that Colby intended to remain there.

“Will, Will…,” Colby chanted. He ground his ass hard against William’s groin and then thrust into their hands. “My Will.” He shuddered to a climax that left William’s palm coated in sticky spend.

William continued to rock his hips. His skin felt too tight, every hair on his body tingled, and a great wave of energy pulsed through him. Out of him. He buried his face against the tender nape of Colby’s neck as he came.

After a few moments, Colby twisted around to face him. “Happy birthday, Will.”

“Best present ever.”

“Will you come to Cowboy Day with me this weekend? I’ll introduce you to my family.”

“Will you wear chaps?”